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The geopolitical implications of President The President’s controversial weekend attack on Venezuela and the capture and extradition of its president, Nicolás Maduro, are still being digested by legal and security experts in the two days following the shocking announcement. What is more certain is the immediate market reaction from a select number of publicly traded stocks that have the potential to be impacted by the military action. Here’s how America’s top energy, defense, and tech stocks are moving on the first trading day after the U.S. intervened in the affairs of its South American neighbor. America’s oil and energy stocks soar Some of the most closely watched stocks today will be those of oil and energy giants traded on U.S. exchanges, particularly Chevron Corporation. The Texas-based oil company is the American energy giant with the biggest footprint in the region, notes CNBC, and thus the one primed to benefit the most from The President’s stated desire to “start making money for the country.” But Chevron isn’t the only one that stands to benefit. In a Saturday press conference addressing America’s military intervention, The President said, “We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies—the biggest anywhere in the world—go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure.” While the president did not name any specific companies, based on premarket trading this morning, investors seem to think that the following oil and energy giants stand to benefit from the intervention: Chevron (NYSE: CVX): up 7.3% Exxon Mobil (NYSE: XOM): up 4.5% ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP): up 7.3% Halliburton Company (NYSE: HAL): up 10.3% One interesting thing to note: Two prominent oil companies that trade on the New York Stock Exchange are currently down slightly in premarket trading. Those companies are Shell (NYSE: SHEL), down 0.7%, and BP (NYSE: BP), down 0.7%. Shell is a British-Dutch company and BP is a British company. Investors may believe that The President is unlikely to allow foreign oil companies—even those of its allies—to profit from America’s intervention in Venezuela. But investors are cautious about defense stocks America’s military intervention in Venezuela suggests that under The President’s second term, the U.S. may engage in a new expansionist hard power policy, directly using its military might to enforce changes around the globe. Indeed, as noted by Reuters, The President has already threatened another military operation against a southern neighbor—this time in Colombia. While the moral and legal aspects of such action are debatable, it’s undeniable that an expansion of America’s military action is good for the bottom lines of the country’s most prominent defense companies. However, investors so far seem to be taking a cautious approach to U.S. companies operating in the defense space, with many companies up only slightly in premarket trading on Monday: Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT): up 1% RTX (NYSE: RTX): up 0.7% Northrop Grumman (NYSE: NOC): up 1% General Dynamics (NYSE: GD): up 1% The Boeing Company (NYSE: BA): up 0.2% Defense-adjacent tech stocks are also up While many of America’s tech giants, including Google and Microsoft, have defense contracts, some smaller tech firms almost exclusively cater to the country’s military and security apparatus. Such companies likewise stand to benefit from increased U.S. military operations. Yet as of the time of this writing, investors also seem to be taking a more cautious approach to these stocks, which include: Palantir Technologies (NASDAQ: PLTR): up 3.8% Honeywell International (NASDAQ: HON): up 0.2% L3Harris Technologies (NYSE: LHX): up 0.7% View the full article

It is January 2026, and it is now time for the monthly Google Webmaster report, where I recap the most important Google organic stories of the past month. Obviously, the Google December 2025 core update was the big one, it ran for 18 days and it really had a large impact on many sites.View the full article

Google has been showing social media posts in Google Discover, including posts from X for a while now, and Google may even show more posts from those you follow. But is Google showing too many social media posts from X in your Google Discover feed?View the full article

Google is working on fixing an issue where some searchers are seeing squished images within the Google Search knowledge panels. I personally cannot replicate this but it seems to be happening for a number of searchers.View the full article

Google Search Console's link report seems to be either missing data or is now showing fewer links. I suspect it is a bug but I also don't think Google spends too much time monitoring this report within Search Console.View the full article

Google added a new button to the Google Ads Change history report that lets advertisers quickly jump to different campaigns and ad groups in this report. It should be a big time saver for some advertisers.View the full article

2026 will be a year of architectural showstoppers. Major projects, from corporate headquarters to sports stadiums and museums, will wrap construction and open to the public in 2026, bringing bold, sometimes audacious buildings to cities around the world. Here are nine buildings opening in 2026 to watch for. Arena Milano—opening in February Milan David Chipperfield Architects Built partly to host ice hockey games during the 2026 Winter Olympics, Arena Milano is a 16,000-seat multipurpose arena that’s expected to become a new center for sports and concerts in Milan. Pritzker Prize-winning David Chipperfield Architects’ design, done in conjunction with Arup, is the standout venue for this edition of the Olympics. An inverted triple-decker layer cake that calls to mind Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum in New York, the building is intended to evoke the elliptical form of the city’s former Roman amphitheater. Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s David Geffen Galleries—opening in April Los Angeles Peter Zumthor Inherently controversial, architect Peter Zumthor’s Wilshire Boulevard-spanning blob-like replacement of Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s (LACMA’s) main gallery buildings has been more than a decade in the making, with no shortage of hand-wringing about its shape, cost, and necessity. The concrete building’s ink blot form spreads across a single elevated floor, marking a hard departure from the museum’s mid-century campus design. One early review—ahead of a slightly odd three-day preview in June 2025 of what was essentially an empty building—found the execution of Zumthor’s vision flawed, but also calls the building a refreshingly risk-taking piece of architecture. Hudson Valley Shakespeare Theater—opening in June Garrison, New York Studio Gang The Samuel H. Scripps Theater Center is the first permanent, purpose-built stage for Hudson Valley Shakespeare, an open air theater company that has been performing under a glorified tent since 1987. Tucked under a swoopy timber tortoise shell of a canopy, the new theater was designed by Studio Gang to shield performers and audience members from the elements and the sun’s glare during dusk performances. It’s also a picture frame for the site’s epic view, opening fully behind the stage to provide audiences a panorama of the ridgelines of the Hudson Valley. Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art Expansion—opening in June Bentonville, Arkansas Safdie Architects The 2011 opening of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Northwest Arkansas was a bold investment by Walmart heir Alice L. Walton in broadening access to world class art beyond the typical metropolitan centers of the U.S. Now, 15 years later, Safdie Architects has returned to broaden the museum’s reach even further. The project expands the museum’s space by 50% while extending the aesthetics of the original design. Future visitors may be unable to tell where the expansion begins, or that there ever even was one. Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library—opening in July Medora, North Dakota Snøhetta Set in the wide openness of North Dakota where Theodore Roosevelt ranched for years before becoming the 26th president of the United States, the new Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library is a stunning earthship of rammed earth, mass timber, and a nearly camouflaged roofline. Designed by Snøhetta to physically blend into the landscape, the building is meant to reflect Roosevelt’s environmental stewardship and deep connection to the landscape of the North Dakota Badlands. Buffalo Bills’ Highmark Stadium—opening in summer 2026 Orchard Park, New York Populous The Buffalo Bills NFL team is moving on from its previous home of more than 50 years into a brand new 60,000-seat stadium. Despite—or possibly because of—Buffalo’s snowy winters, the stadium was designed to be an open bowl, welcoming the elements onto the field and all but the uppermost stadium seats. The stadium’s designer, sports architecture specialists Populous, calls it “one of the most intimidating home field environments in the league.” Lucas Museum of Narrative Art—opening in September Los Angeles MAD One of the most anticipated new cultural institutions in recent years, George Lucas’s $1 billion museum is hotly awaited both for its extensive art collection and its far-out architecture. Designed by MAD Architects with an integrated landscape by Studio-MLA, the spaceship-shaped building is a curvaceous modern behemoth in Los Angeles history-laden Exposition Park. Though his firm has built dozens of shapely museums and opera houses across China, this will be lead architect Ma Yansong’s first major cultural institution in the U.S. Atlassian Central—opening in November Sydney SHoP Architects When software giant Atlassian’s new headquarters building opens in 2026, this 39-story skyscraper will be the world’s tallest hybrid timber building. Made up primarily of six mass timber four-level buildings-within-the-building, the tower encases everything in a criss-crossing steel exoskeleton wrapped in operable glass windows. Designed by SHoP Architects, the tower is also a hybrid at ground level, preserving a historic train shed and converting part of it into the tower’s new lobby. Guggenheim Abu Dhabi—opening TBD Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates Gehry Partners Possibly the last major project to be designed by architect Frank Gehry before his death in December 2025, the long-awaited Guggenheim Abu Dhabi is expected to open to the public sometime in 2026, 20 years after it was first announced. Appearing to be a jumble of funnels, tubes, and cubes, the museum fully embodies Gehry’s signature style. Its government backers hope the museum also taps into the energy of previous Gehry projects, like its counterpart museum in Bilbao, Spain. One official recently told a local newspaper the museum aspired to be “a civic space.” View the full article

Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning. Twenty twenty-six will be a year of financial corrections, AI-driven biological breakthroughs, and new thinking about cybersecurity and executive protection—at least according to the CEOs I recently asked to provide bold prognostications. Here’s how 12 of them responded. New threats, new protections Rick Caccia, CEO of AI security platform WitnessAI, believes 2026 will bring the first major AI-driven cyberattack that causes significant financial damage. After that happens, he predicts corporations will augment their existing security budgets, and those deals will close three times faster than current cycles as companies move fast to secure their systems. “Currently, enterprise AI spending remains largely compliance-focused as companies prepare for regulatory requirements in the absence of active threats,” Caccia says. An AI-powered attack will highlight the need for additional security investment, he says, adding, “This will create a new market dynamic where AI security moves from ’nice to have‘ to ’business critical‘ overnight.” Ted Bailey, founder and CEO of Dataminr, and Balaji Yelamanchili, CEO of ThreatConnect, see business leaders demanding threat intelligence that’s tailored to their specific organizations in 2026. Amid tight budgets and staffing shortages—not to mention AI threats—companies need real-time intelligence about threats, communicated in the context of their businesses and investments. They say information that can’t answer the question How does this affect my organization? is unhelpful, and that 2026 will see organizations matching data about external threats with the effectiveness of their internal controls to understand their true vulnerabilities. Filip Kaliszan, CEO and cofounder of software-driven building security company Verkada, predicts that attacks on politicians and executives will drive a “new era of investment and standardization in executive protection.” Rising threats, ranging from harassment and doxxing to high-profile physical attacks such as the killing of UnitedHealthcare’s Brian Thompson—will prompt boards of directors to think differently about C-suite security. “Just as cybersecurity teams measure dwell times, breach costs, and vulnerability exposure, executive protection teams will increasingly quantify risk reduction and operational impact—how many threats were identified, potential losses avoided, or disruptions mitigated,” he says. AI infrastructure evolves KR Sridhar, founder, chairman, and CEO of Bloom Energy, maker of fuel-cell energy systems, predicts that AI data centers and large-scale manufacturing facilities that need massive, reliable energy will move to onsite power rather than relying solely on the central grid. “As AI’s explosive growth collides with grid limitations, businesses and regulators will accelerate adoption of next-generation energy models that deliver clean, affordable, and abundant power,” Sridhar says. “This is essential for building a future where innovation and sustainability go hand in hand.” And Sami Issa, director and CEO of Global AI, believes the world will treat sovereign AI—a nation’s ability to use its own infrastructure and data to produce AI—the same way it treats national energy grids. “This shift may look sudden from the outside, but from my vantage point, the demand signals are already impossible to ignore,” Issa says. “Nations will compete to secure gigawatt-scale, single-tenant capacity, and the organizations that move early will define the next decade of AI capability and security.” Evan Beard, CEO and cofounder of Standard Bots, predicts the United States will hit 45,000 new industrial robot installations as AI-powered robots prove they can handle sustained production. He believes that first-time automation buyers, especially small to midsize manufacturers, will embrace the technology as industrial robots become more accessible and affordable. “By year-end, those new deployments will empirically confirm what American manufacturers already tell us: When companies adopt advanced robotics, they become more cost-competitive, improve productivity, and retain or grow their workforce in more technical and higher-wage roles,” he says. AI: big and small Bam Azizi, CEO and cofounder at Mesh, a global payment network, predicts the true engine of growth for agentic commerce—AI agents handling digital transactions—won’t be fueled by consumer shopping but by business-to-business applications, especially micropayment processing. “Agents are set to perform thousands of high-velocity, fractional transactions for API (application programming interface) calls and cross-border services that traditional card rails can’t handle,” Azizi says. Micha Breakstone, cofounder and CEO of biotech company Somite AI, predicts venture capitalists this year will prioritize investing in biotech companies that essentially transform cellular biology into a predictive engineering science that can transform medicine and drug development. He asserts that these companies “will be valued less like traditional biotech and more like Tesla. The value proposition to investors is not just the individual car (the drug), but the ‘autonomous driving software’ (the platform) that powers it.” A coming correction A few CEOs expressed concerns about overheated financial markets. “I’ve been in private equity for 31 years, and I’ve never seen anything like the current level of froth in the credit markets,” says Graham Weaver, founder and CEO of Alpine Investors. Indeed, corporate bond issuance and growth in the $1.1 trillion private credit market showed little sign of slowing last fall. “I can’t predict when this ends—maybe it’s 2026, maybe not—but as night follows day, it will end,” Weaver says. “When it does, and when debt becomes less available and the froth begins to fade, [over-leveraged] companies could face a very painful reckoning. My advice is to prepare now so the de-leveraging becomes a soft landing rather than a crash landing.” Sam Miller, CEO and cofounder of payments app Kasheesh, offers an even starker warning: “In 2026, America could face the largest financial correction in modern history, and AI will not be the safety net for everyday Americans.” As AI scales, he says, corporations will gain efficiency and speed, but small businesses and consumers will struggle. “We need AI built for inclusion, designed for those being left behind, to create a financial system that helps everyone rise, not just those already ahead.” Then again . . . If these projections feel unsettling, you can always take solace in the words of Kunal Kapoor, CEO of Morningstar, who takes a refreshingly contrarian stance: “I predict that most predictions will not come true!” (Disclosure: Morningstar’s executive chairman, Joe Mansueto, owns Inc. and Fast Company’s parent company.) Kapoor adds: “Put me in the optimist camp when it comes to thinking about the impact changing technology will have on our industry, the economy, or business landscape.” Indeed, being a Modern CEO requires a good measure of enthusiasm and sanguinity in the face of change and uncertainty, which we’re sure to experience throughout 2026. Your predictions What big changes are you anticipating in 2026? Send your bold predictions to me at stephaniemehta@mansueto.com, and I’ll compile the most compelling prognostications in a future newsletter. Read more: unpredictable predictions Axios Pro Rata’s Dan Primack collected one-line predictions on AI, life sciences, and more Three futurists weigh in on how AI will change the world in 2026 AI predictions from a ChatGPT pioneer View the full article

A world order built around great power spheres of influence is a recipe for instability and conflictView the full article

A few months ago, I was scrolling through TikTok when I came across a video that stopped me in my tracks. It starred an animated frog, dressed in a wizard hat, robe, and pink nail polish, superimposed over a psychedelic background and speaking in a hypnotizing, ethereal voice. “It’s time to stop doing nothing, and start doing something,” he crooned. “I cast . . . motivation!” I’d stumbled across the Pine Wizard Frog—a recurring character on the official TikTok account of household cleaning fluid Pine-Sol. Pine-Sol’s page, with its surrealist visuals and hypnotizing songs, is an example of what I call “brain-rot-brand TikTok”: It’s a subgenre of digital marketing that rejects traditional advertising in favor of the kind of content that actually performs well on TikTok and Instagram Reels. Rather than selling products directly, brain-rot-brand TikTok embraces head-turning, often nonsensical choices, like fried visuals, abrasive design, and unsettling storylines, to spread brand awareness and—presumably—boost sales. A few years ago, most companies wouldn’t have touched brain-rot TikTok with a 10-foot pole. But as brands like Duolingo have built entire communities around bucking digital brand norms, others have gradually jumped on the bandwagon. Nutter Butter might be the first brand that went full brain rot, with hits like a Nutter Butter taking a trip to the playground on what appeared to be way too much acid. More recently, Brita, Amtrak, Sour Patch Kids, Brisk Canada, Mug Root Beer, and Dr Pepper have adopted some flavor of brain-rot branding. The strategy appears to be working. According to Clorox, which owns Brita and Pine-Sol, in the past year Pine-Sol was the only brand to crack the top 15 in TikTok’s #cleaning category (the other 14 were creators with followings). In June, Brita’s TikTok content raked in more than 44 million views. In July, Amtrak scored its most-viewed Instagram post of all time by trying out a weirder brand voice. And multiple years into its brain-rot experiment, Nutter Butter still regularly amasses millions of views with its TikToks. But as someone who’s now likely watched hundreds of these videos (for research, obviously), I’ve been wondering: Is brain-rot-brand TikTok cringe yet? As more and more brands try to break through the crowded attention economy with wackier social concepts, at what point does it stop feeling like they’re in on the joke and more like a desperate plea for attention? To get to the bottom of this query, I rang up Ryan Benson. He’s the self-described “social media menace” who led Nutter Butter’s original brain-rot strategy, helped build Sour Patch Kids’s uniquely threatening brand voice, and has since gone on to found his own creative agency, Loudmouth. We discussed Nutter Butter’s creepy ’60s commercial, a tea brand that’s weirdly into cheese, and Dunkin’s horny spider donut. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Can you give a bit of background on the brand story you were telling with Nutter Butter? Why did it make sense to go so weird—even weirder than Duolingo, which many people cite as the OG unhinged brand? With Nutter Butter, our agency contract was for I think 23 Mondelēz brands. Nutter Butter was a tier three—there were three tiers, so they were on the bottom. Like a C-list snack? Yes, exactly. And that meant the resources that were available to each brand were fully dependent on what tier they were. So tier one is Oreo, and as you can imagine Oreo has six agencies working for it and endless resources. There are ads on TV, billboards, all sorts of agencies. Nutter Butter had $2,000 in an expense account and me. The narrative we were working with was, this is an old cookie, there’s not a lot of story here. What can we do to get people talking about Nutter Butter? And as we experimented with different formats—brain rot being one of those—what we learned is people were left asking, “Is Nutter Butter okay?” And we were like, “Hey, it’s not, ‘How do I buy a Nutter Butter off the shelf,’ but they’re talking about this.” Nutter Butter So then we learned how to feed the conversations that they wanted to see. We picked up from the comments like, “Oh, they’re talking about this aspect of the photo–let’s make sure that we edit that into the next one.” Or, “They’re noticing that we put Morse code in the bottom of the image. Let’s make sure we put a message in a different coded language in the next one.” It actually became a conversation. Through that, we developed Aidan and brought back the Nutter Butter man from the ’60s commercial, and we really started to reintroduce all these creepy analog horror themes. [Editor’s note: Aidan is an original recurring character in Nutter Butter’s videos, based on one of the brand’s biggest online fans.] I think what some people miss when they’re like, “Let’s copy and paste the Nutter Butter approach,” is that we didn’t have to make things up. We were just pulling from the old commercial that exists already. If you were consulting for another brand, how would you advise them on whether they should get in on this strategy? The first question I would be asking is, “Why?” And if their reason is anything at all about Nutter Butter, I would tell them no. What made Nutter Butter so successful is that we already had the audience that was receptive to the weirdness. We were playing off of things that we saw—they were posting, they were reposting, they were interacting on—so we knew that our audience had a shared interest. We understood that some of the outrage that we saw was actually fanship. They were following, they wanted to find out, they were up for the antics. And somehow, at the end of the day, we actually influenced people to go buy more off the shelves. Once the client saw that it was actually somehow affecting sales numbers, they were like, “Okay, go for it.” I encourage everyone to try out-of-the-box things and do new things for brands that haven’t had attention on them. But if the only reason you want to do it is because it worked for Nutter Butter, go back to the drawing board, because I don’t want you to waste your time. Sure, weird people might see it, but are you going to alienate all of your actual followers? Are you also noticing more of this brain-rot-brand strategy online? If so, I’m curious if there are any examples that come to mind. Yeah, absolutely. One of my new favorite things that I’ve just developed as a personality trait is I attract people sending me things from brands that are going rogue or going brain rot, and they’re like, “This is your legacy. You did this.” Off the top of my head, some brands that I love that are doing the brain-rot approach right now: Mug Root Beer is insane; Brisk Canada is insane; Dr Pepper is doing a big one right now—not necessarily analog horror vibes, but they are deep-frying images, they’re purposefully low quality. It’s stupid, irreverent humor. These are promising to me because they all seem like they’re playing off the same energy of like, “Oh, it worked in the comments last time.” Brisk Canada’s thing is cheese. They make tea in a can, but they love shredding cheese onto the can. They love just copious amounts of cheese. It makes no sense. They don’t sell cheese. Duolingo What kinds of mistakes do you see companies making when they try this out? The thing that I see being a problem is that some of these brands have adopted this brain-rot strategy not understanding that it’s a means of communication that transcends traditional marketing. It does that for a reason, because we’ve developed this ability to communicate without selling. But then if a brand comes and co-ops this ability to communicate without selling in order to sell, they’re just kind of shitting on it. I think that we will continue to see brands try to adopt this, but I don’t know how many will be successful, because they have to understand that at the end of the day, they’re selling to people who experience real things and experience a real world outside. There are two different worlds operating, and the mastery is understanding how to join these communities and have conversations that are two-sided, instead of just showing up and being like, “Hello, you dumb kids—you like cheese on your tea? Well, I have a six-pack and it’s $29.99.” You lose people. And for some brands, all of this is just a ploy to sell, so it will have issues. Dunkin’ Donuts I don’t want to make you burn any bridges with brands, but I am curious if you’ve seen anyone try the more unhinged strategy in a way that wasn’t really working for you. I don’t have any bridges here, so it may burn, but I’m not on the other side. Dunkin’ Donuts and their spider donut thing. They did a first post with an apology graphic, where they bolded certain letters and it spelled out “spidey” or something. That was actually duplicative of my work two or three years ago, where I posted an apology from Nutter Butter and bolded letters to spell “Aidan.” It was the exact same format—with their logo and their colors—almost down to the font. And then they did it again the next year. This last year, they put a lot of budget into an experiential drive-through where they decorated the store, but I did see some commentary of fans being like, “Hey, we’re kind of done with the horny spider donut thing.” They’re milking it. On that note, do you see a point at which we reach a critical mass of this kind of thing? What’s going to happen that makes people say, like, “Ugh, this is stupid—I’m over it”? Honestly, sometimes I question if we’re there. I think back to the evolution of the Nutter Butter account. When I started, we were not immediately posting these deep-fried, demon-in-a-closet-covered-in-peanut-butter-type vibes. We were posting memes and text posts on Twitter and doing brand things. So it’s not like we’re a full anomaly and we’ve never done the things that other brand accounts have done. We tried everything. So I question how many brands right now are in the early stages of what we did and are about to hit a wall of responses of people being like, “Meh,” because there’s already comments on my old stuff being like, “Okay, guys, you’ve played this out too long.” I also questioned the apology trend that hit a couple months ago. For me that was a turning point, because when we did it, we fully understood like, “Hey, it’s not normal for brands to post an apology, it could go south.” We understood this itself is a little bit risky, absurd, extreme. And then it devolved. I question how many brands are about to be shamed, because going back to what I was saying earlier, this method of communication is supposed to be human-based. I don’t know how many brands are pursuing it with that in mind. If you’re just deploying 15 assets in a campaign that are scheduled, you’re not doing any community management, so there’s no user insights in whatever you’re building. They won’t necessarily feel like they’re along for the ride. It will just be like, “Oh, they’re doing an absurdist thing.” If you add in another degree of people doing it just because it worked for Nutter Butter, there’s no natural tie-in. Now you’re just throwing a pizza party for the marketing team. It’s hard to make a prediction, but I just feel like we’re going to see a brand like Palantir get in on it, or we’re going to see something dystopian, and then everyone’s going to be like, “We’ve had enough.” I don’t think we’re there yet, but I feel like we’ve been bordering on it. View the full article

An employee handbook is a crucial document that outlines your company’s policies and expectations. It serves as a guide for both new hires and current employees, detailing procedures and standards for behavior. Comprehending its structure and content is fundamental for promoting a positive workplace environment. Key sections, like employment policies and conflict resolution procedures, will help you navigate your role and responsibilities. But what specific components make an effective handbook? Key Takeaways An employee handbook outlines company policies, procedures, and standards for employee behavior within the organization. It serves as a roadmap for new hires to understand the company mission, values, and culture. The handbook promotes legal compliance, helping to mitigate risks related to employment laws and workplace conduct. Regular updates ensure policies remain relevant and reflect changes in laws or organizational practices. Clear documentation of conduct expectations fosters accountability and aids in conflict resolution among employees. What Is an Employee Handbook? An employee handbook is an important document that serves as a roadmap for understanding the policies and expectations within an organization. So, what’s a handbook? It’s a thorough resource that outlines the company’s policies, procedures, and standards for employee behavior. In simple terms, the employee handbook definition encompasses guidelines that help new hires understand the company’s mission, values, and culture right from the start. Typically, this handbook includes vital information such as legal disclaimers, equal employment opportunity statements, and anti-harassment policies to guarantee compliance with applicable laws. It clarifies your rights and responsibilities, reducing misunderstandings and potential legal issues for the organization. Finally, regular updates are necessary to keep the handbook current with changes in laws, policies, and employee feedback, thereby promoting transparency and consistency in the workplace. Importance of an Employee Handbook Though you mightn’t realize it, an employee handbook plays a crucial role in shaping the workplace environment and guiding employee behavior. It centralizes company policies, guaranteeing all employees access to consistent information, which promotes fairness and transparency across the organization. This resource is particularly significant for onboarding new hires, helping them understand your company culture, values, and expectations, in the end improving retention rates and cultivating a sense of belonging. Additionally, the handbook helps mitigate legal risks by clearly outlining compliance with laws like Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) and anti-harassment policies, reducing the likelihood of litigation. Key Components to Include in an Employee Handbook Building on the importance of an employee handbook, it’s vital to understand which key components should be included to create an effective resource. Start with a clear introduction outlining your company’s mission, vision, and core values; this sets the tone for alignment among employees. Next, detail important employment policies, including equal employment opportunity, anti-discrimination measures, and workplace conduct to guarantee a fair environment. Extensive information on compensation and benefits is significant, so include salary structures, health insurance options, and unique perks. Clearly outline leave and time-off policies, specifying procedures for requesting time off, types of leave available, and guidelines for reporting absences. Finally, incorporate health and safety procedures to inform employees about workplace safety protocols and emergency procedures. Including these components will help create a thorough and useful handbook that serves as a reliable resource for your employees. Steps to Create an Effective Employee Handbook Creating an effective employee handbook involves several key steps that guarantee it serves as a useful resource for your staff. Start by identifying key stakeholders, including HR, legal, and management, to gather input on necessary policies and procedures. Next, draft the handbook using clear, employee-friendly language, ensuring that all policies are easily grasped without legal jargon. Once drafted, review the document with stakeholders for feedback and to confirm compliance with federal, state, and local laws before finalizing the content. After finalization, distribute the handbook to all employees in an accessible format, requiring them to acknowledge receipt to confirm their comprehension of the outlined policies. Finally, schedule regular reviews and updates of the handbook to reflect changes in laws, company practices, and employee feedback, ensuring it remains relevant and compliant. Best Practices for Updating Your Handbook To keep your employee handbook relevant and effective, it’s crucial to schedule regular reviews at least once a year. This process should include input from diverse stakeholders, such as HR and employees, to guarantee your policies are clear and concise. Schedule Regular Reviews Regularly scheduling reviews of your employee handbook is essential for maintaining compliance and relevance in an ever-changing legal environment. Aim to conduct these reviews at least annually to guarantee your policies align with current federal, state, and local laws. Involve a diverse group of stakeholders, such as HR, legal counsel, and department heads, during the review process. This collaboration will provide thorough insights and feedback on necessary updates. Document all changes made in each review cycle to track policy evolution and guarantee transparency. After updates, communicate major changes to all employees without delay, making sure they acknowledge and understand the revisions. This reinforces the handbook’s role as a living document that evolves with your organization. Incorporate Employee Input Incorporating employee input into the employee handbook update process can greatly improve its relevance and effectiveness. Start by soliciting feedback through surveys or focus groups, ensuring that employees feel their perspectives are valued. New employees can help identify unclear sections, making the handbook more user-friendly. Long-term employees can share their experiences and suggest improvements, leveraging their knowledge of the company culture. Regularly communicate with staff about upcoming revisions, emphasizing the importance of their input to encourage ownership and engagement. Furthermore, implement a system for ongoing feedback, allowing employees to submit suggestions at any time. This approach promotes continuous improvement, ensuring the handbook evolves with the needs and insights of your workforce. Benefits of a Well-Structured Employee Handbook A well-structured employee handbook promotes consistency across teams by centralizing policies and expectations, making it easier for everyone to understand their roles. This clarity not merely cultivates a unified work environment but additionally greatly reduces legal risks by clearly outlining policies related to discrimination and workplace safety. When employees know the rules and benefits, it improves their overall satisfaction and helps maintain a professional atmosphere. Promotes Consistency Across Teams When you implement a well-structured employee handbook, you help guarantee consistency across teams by clearly defining company policies and procedures. This clarity guarantees that all employees understand their expectations and responsibilities, which reduces misunderstandings and conflicts. As a result, your workplace environment becomes more positive and productive. By providing uniform information on benefits, time-off policies, and workplace conduct, the handbook promotes trust between employees and management. Consistent communication through the handbook likewise contributes to increased employee satisfaction and retention, as individuals feel informed and valued. Regularly updating the handbook helps maintain this consistency amid evolving laws and organizational practices, assuring all employees remain aligned with current expectations and feel supported in their roles. Reduces Legal Risks By clearly outlining company policies and procedures, a well-structured employee handbook greatly reduces legal risks for your organization. It helps minimize misunderstandings among employees, which can lead to potential legal disputes. By including thorough anti-discrimination and anti-harassment policies, the handbook acts as a legal defense against claims of workplace misconduct. Regularly updating the handbook guarantees compliance with evolving federal, state, and local employment laws, considerably lowering the risk of penalties for non-compliance. Clear documentation of conduct expectations and disciplinary procedures promotes fairness, deterring litigation related to wrongful termination or discrimination claims. Providing employees with a resource to reference their rights and responsibilities additionally diminishes conflict, as documented policies can resolve misunderstandings effectively. Frequently Asked Questions What Is the Definition of an Employee Handbook? An employee handbook is a document that outlines your organization’s policies, procedures, and expectations regarding behavior and performance. It provides you with crucial information about workplace rules, benefits, and your rights and responsibilities. The handbook helps guarantee compliance with legal requirements, covering topics like anti-discrimination and workplace safety. Typically, it includes sections on company culture, employment policies, conduct, compensation, and benefits, aligning you with the organization’s values and goals. What Are the Key Points of the Employee Handbook? The key points of an employee handbook include the company’s mission, values, and code of conduct, which help align your behavior with organizational goals. It outlines fundamental policies on equal opportunity, anti-discrimination, and workplace conduct. You’ll additionally find details about compensation, benefits, and leave policies, which clarify your rights and entitlements. Regular updates are vital to guarantee compliance with laws and keep the content relevant, emphasizing the importance of periodic reviews. What Not to Put in an Employee Handbook? You shouldn’t include overly detailed job descriptions, personal opinions, or informal language in an employee handbook. Avoid making promises about job security, as they can lead to legal issues. Exclude confidential company information, like trade secrets, to protect your organization. Furthermore, steer clear of any policies that aren’t compliant with local, state, or federal laws, as including them can damage the handbook’s credibility and expose the company to legal repercussions. How to Structure a Handbook? To structure a handbook effectively, start with a clear introduction that outlines your company’s mission, vision, and values. Organize the content into sections like Employment Policies, Workplace Conduct, and Compensation and Benefits, ensuring each topic flows logically. Include a table of contents and an index for easy navigation. Regularly review and update the handbook to reflect policy changes or legal requirements, keeping it relevant and user-friendly for employees. Conclusion In conclusion, an employee handbook is crucial for outlining company policies, procedures, and behavioral expectations. By comprehending its components and following best practices for creation and updates, you can guarantee that the handbook remains a relevant resource for all employees. A well-structured handbook not just clarifies company values but additionally cultivates a positive workplace environment. In the end, investing time in developing and maintaining your employee handbook can improve compliance and boost overall organizational effectiveness. Image via Google Gemini This article, "Understanding Employee Handbook Definition – A How-To Guide" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

An employee handbook is a crucial document that outlines your company’s policies and expectations. It serves as a guide for both new hires and current employees, detailing procedures and standards for behavior. Comprehending its structure and content is fundamental for promoting a positive workplace environment. Key sections, like employment policies and conflict resolution procedures, will help you navigate your role and responsibilities. But what specific components make an effective handbook? Key Takeaways An employee handbook outlines company policies, procedures, and standards for employee behavior within the organization. It serves as a roadmap for new hires to understand the company mission, values, and culture. The handbook promotes legal compliance, helping to mitigate risks related to employment laws and workplace conduct. Regular updates ensure policies remain relevant and reflect changes in laws or organizational practices. Clear documentation of conduct expectations fosters accountability and aids in conflict resolution among employees. What Is an Employee Handbook? An employee handbook is an important document that serves as a roadmap for understanding the policies and expectations within an organization. So, what’s a handbook? It’s a thorough resource that outlines the company’s policies, procedures, and standards for employee behavior. In simple terms, the employee handbook definition encompasses guidelines that help new hires understand the company’s mission, values, and culture right from the start. Typically, this handbook includes vital information such as legal disclaimers, equal employment opportunity statements, and anti-harassment policies to guarantee compliance with applicable laws. It clarifies your rights and responsibilities, reducing misunderstandings and potential legal issues for the organization. Finally, regular updates are necessary to keep the handbook current with changes in laws, policies, and employee feedback, thereby promoting transparency and consistency in the workplace. Importance of an Employee Handbook Though you mightn’t realize it, an employee handbook plays a crucial role in shaping the workplace environment and guiding employee behavior. It centralizes company policies, guaranteeing all employees access to consistent information, which promotes fairness and transparency across the organization. This resource is particularly significant for onboarding new hires, helping them understand your company culture, values, and expectations, in the end improving retention rates and cultivating a sense of belonging. Additionally, the handbook helps mitigate legal risks by clearly outlining compliance with laws like Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) and anti-harassment policies, reducing the likelihood of litigation. Key Components to Include in an Employee Handbook Building on the importance of an employee handbook, it’s vital to understand which key components should be included to create an effective resource. Start with a clear introduction outlining your company’s mission, vision, and core values; this sets the tone for alignment among employees. Next, detail important employment policies, including equal employment opportunity, anti-discrimination measures, and workplace conduct to guarantee a fair environment. Extensive information on compensation and benefits is significant, so include salary structures, health insurance options, and unique perks. Clearly outline leave and time-off policies, specifying procedures for requesting time off, types of leave available, and guidelines for reporting absences. Finally, incorporate health and safety procedures to inform employees about workplace safety protocols and emergency procedures. Including these components will help create a thorough and useful handbook that serves as a reliable resource for your employees. Steps to Create an Effective Employee Handbook Creating an effective employee handbook involves several key steps that guarantee it serves as a useful resource for your staff. Start by identifying key stakeholders, including HR, legal, and management, to gather input on necessary policies and procedures. Next, draft the handbook using clear, employee-friendly language, ensuring that all policies are easily grasped without legal jargon. Once drafted, review the document with stakeholders for feedback and to confirm compliance with federal, state, and local laws before finalizing the content. After finalization, distribute the handbook to all employees in an accessible format, requiring them to acknowledge receipt to confirm their comprehension of the outlined policies. Finally, schedule regular reviews and updates of the handbook to reflect changes in laws, company practices, and employee feedback, ensuring it remains relevant and compliant. Best Practices for Updating Your Handbook To keep your employee handbook relevant and effective, it’s crucial to schedule regular reviews at least once a year. This process should include input from diverse stakeholders, such as HR and employees, to guarantee your policies are clear and concise. Schedule Regular Reviews Regularly scheduling reviews of your employee handbook is essential for maintaining compliance and relevance in an ever-changing legal environment. Aim to conduct these reviews at least annually to guarantee your policies align with current federal, state, and local laws. Involve a diverse group of stakeholders, such as HR, legal counsel, and department heads, during the review process. This collaboration will provide thorough insights and feedback on necessary updates. Document all changes made in each review cycle to track policy evolution and guarantee transparency. After updates, communicate major changes to all employees without delay, making sure they acknowledge and understand the revisions. This reinforces the handbook’s role as a living document that evolves with your organization. Incorporate Employee Input Incorporating employee input into the employee handbook update process can greatly improve its relevance and effectiveness. Start by soliciting feedback through surveys or focus groups, ensuring that employees feel their perspectives are valued. New employees can help identify unclear sections, making the handbook more user-friendly. Long-term employees can share their experiences and suggest improvements, leveraging their knowledge of the company culture. Regularly communicate with staff about upcoming revisions, emphasizing the importance of their input to encourage ownership and engagement. Furthermore, implement a system for ongoing feedback, allowing employees to submit suggestions at any time. This approach promotes continuous improvement, ensuring the handbook evolves with the needs and insights of your workforce. Benefits of a Well-Structured Employee Handbook A well-structured employee handbook promotes consistency across teams by centralizing policies and expectations, making it easier for everyone to understand their roles. This clarity not merely cultivates a unified work environment but additionally greatly reduces legal risks by clearly outlining policies related to discrimination and workplace safety. When employees know the rules and benefits, it improves their overall satisfaction and helps maintain a professional atmosphere. Promotes Consistency Across Teams When you implement a well-structured employee handbook, you help guarantee consistency across teams by clearly defining company policies and procedures. This clarity guarantees that all employees understand their expectations and responsibilities, which reduces misunderstandings and conflicts. As a result, your workplace environment becomes more positive and productive. By providing uniform information on benefits, time-off policies, and workplace conduct, the handbook promotes trust between employees and management. Consistent communication through the handbook likewise contributes to increased employee satisfaction and retention, as individuals feel informed and valued. Regularly updating the handbook helps maintain this consistency amid evolving laws and organizational practices, assuring all employees remain aligned with current expectations and feel supported in their roles. Reduces Legal Risks By clearly outlining company policies and procedures, a well-structured employee handbook greatly reduces legal risks for your organization. It helps minimize misunderstandings among employees, which can lead to potential legal disputes. By including thorough anti-discrimination and anti-harassment policies, the handbook acts as a legal defense against claims of workplace misconduct. Regularly updating the handbook guarantees compliance with evolving federal, state, and local employment laws, considerably lowering the risk of penalties for non-compliance. Clear documentation of conduct expectations and disciplinary procedures promotes fairness, deterring litigation related to wrongful termination or discrimination claims. Providing employees with a resource to reference their rights and responsibilities additionally diminishes conflict, as documented policies can resolve misunderstandings effectively. Frequently Asked Questions What Is the Definition of an Employee Handbook? An employee handbook is a document that outlines your organization’s policies, procedures, and expectations regarding behavior and performance. It provides you with crucial information about workplace rules, benefits, and your rights and responsibilities. The handbook helps guarantee compliance with legal requirements, covering topics like anti-discrimination and workplace safety. Typically, it includes sections on company culture, employment policies, conduct, compensation, and benefits, aligning you with the organization’s values and goals. What Are the Key Points of the Employee Handbook? The key points of an employee handbook include the company’s mission, values, and code of conduct, which help align your behavior with organizational goals. It outlines fundamental policies on equal opportunity, anti-discrimination, and workplace conduct. You’ll additionally find details about compensation, benefits, and leave policies, which clarify your rights and entitlements. Regular updates are vital to guarantee compliance with laws and keep the content relevant, emphasizing the importance of periodic reviews. What Not to Put in an Employee Handbook? You shouldn’t include overly detailed job descriptions, personal opinions, or informal language in an employee handbook. Avoid making promises about job security, as they can lead to legal issues. Exclude confidential company information, like trade secrets, to protect your organization. Furthermore, steer clear of any policies that aren’t compliant with local, state, or federal laws, as including them can damage the handbook’s credibility and expose the company to legal repercussions. How to Structure a Handbook? To structure a handbook effectively, start with a clear introduction that outlines your company’s mission, vision, and values. Organize the content into sections like Employment Policies, Workplace Conduct, and Compensation and Benefits, ensuring each topic flows logically. Include a table of contents and an index for easy navigation. Regularly review and update the handbook to reflect policy changes or legal requirements, keeping it relevant and user-friendly for employees. Conclusion In conclusion, an employee handbook is crucial for outlining company policies, procedures, and behavioral expectations. By comprehending its components and following best practices for creation and updates, you can guarantee that the handbook remains a relevant resource for all employees. A well-structured handbook not just clarifies company values but additionally cultivates a positive workplace environment. In the end, investing time in developing and maintaining your employee handbook can improve compliance and boost overall organizational effectiveness. Image via Google Gemini This article, "Understanding Employee Handbook Definition – A How-To Guide" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

In a world where trust in institutions is at an all-time low and the pace of change is relentless, the most effective leaders are not those who hide behind polished press releases or corporate jargon. They are the ones who step forward with authentic stories—stories that reveal not just their vision, but their humility, values, and the messy realities of leading in uncertain times. Welcome to the era of the storytelling CEO, where transparency isn’t just a buzzword, it’s the new leadership currency. Why Stories Matter More Than Ever For millennia, stories have been the glue that binds communities, shapes cultures, and helps us make sense of the world. Today, as organizations grapple with complex challenges, from digital transformation to climate change, data and strategy alone are not enough. Humans are narrative animals, and stories help us make sense of the world in ways that data and rational arguments often can’t. Stories help to build trust, foster empathy, and catalyze action in ways that spreadsheets never will. Transparency: The Foundation of Innovation Culture Culture is critical to innovation. The storytelling CEO understands that transparency, sharing not just successes but also failures, doubts, and lessons learned, creates the conditions for new ideas and psychological safety. When leaders model openness through the stories they tell, they give permission for others to do the same, unlocking creativity and risk-taking across the organization. For example, Satya Nadella at Microsoft championed a “learn-it-all” culture over a “know-it-all” one. By sharing stories of his own learning journey, Nadella made it safe for others to experiment, fail, and grow. This shift didn’t just improve morale, it drove innovation and business results. The Five Phases of Story-Centred Leadership Based on my research and work with thousands of leaders globally, I’ve developed a five-phase circular model for story-centred leadership: Story Listening: Deep listening is the antidote to echo chambers and ego chambers. Walk in the shoes of others to gain empathy and perspective. Story Building: Craft narratives that are clear, compelling, rooted in purpose and full of sticky details. The best stories answer, “why does this matter?” for every stakeholder. Story Shaping: Practice and refine stories with feedback. Authenticity beats perfection, and people connect with what’s real, not what’s rehearsed. Story Sharing: Stories are the connective tissue of change. Seed stories throughout the organization to grow a fearless, purpose-led culture. Story Living: Embody the story through actions and decisions. The most powerful stories are those we live, not just tell. Stories are not ‘soft’, they are our essential software Many leaders struggle with the idea of storytelling, dismissing it as superficial or “soft.” As digital transformation efforts repeatedly fail due to lack of buy-in and cultural resistance, the need for narrative becomes clear. If we want our strategies to succeed, we must shift that mindset: stories are our essential software. As a previous Fast Company article notes, “The six most common reasons digital transformations fail” often boil down to poor communication and lack of shared vision—gaps that stories can bridge. Storytelling is not about spinning fairy tales or sugarcoating reality. It’s about making meaning from complexity, surfacing the “why” behind the “what,” and inviting others into a shared journey. As one leader, Ian Ellison, told me, “I’ve learnt the hard way that they (stories) are essential in engaging people in sustainable change.” The Risks of Storytelling and How to Avoid Them Stories can always be misused, something that we’re currently seeing on a global scale. In the wrong hands, they can become tools for manipulation or exclusion. The shadow side of storytelling is spin, distraction, and even outright deception. That’s why transparency is so vital. The storytelling CEO must be vigilant about grounding stories in truth, inviting diverse voices and challenge, and acknowledging complexity rather than oversimplifying. Cross-Cultural Communication: Stories as Bridges In our globalized world, leaders must navigate cultural differences with sensitivity and skill. Stories are universal, but the way they’re told and received can vary widely. The best leaders are those who listen deeply to the stories of others, adapt their narratives for different audiences, and use storytelling to bridge divides. The Neuroscience of Storytelling Understanding how our brains are wired for stories can make us better leaders. Stories activate multiple regions of the brain, making messages more memorable and emotionally resonant. As Fast Company has reported, “understanding how your brain works can make you a better leader” and storytelling is a key part of that tool kit. The New Leadership Currency In a world awash with information but starved for meaning, the storytelling CEO stands out. Transparency, rooted in authentic, purpose-driven stories, is the currency that builds trust, inspires action, and accelerates change. As leaders, our challenge is not just to tell better stories, but to listen, shape, share, and live them every day. If you want to lead, start by asking: What’s the story you’re telling? And is it true, transparent and worth following? Five Ways to Become a Storytelling CEO Listen first. Seek out stories from every corner of your organization. Be humble. Share your failures and lessons learned, not just your wins. Connect the dots. Use stories to shine a light on your North Star, linking strategy to purpose and values. Invite others in. Make space for diverse voices and perspectives. Live your story. Let your actions reinforce your words. And remember: you are speaking volumes before you even open your mouth! View the full article

Washington’s capture of Nicolás Maduro risks triggering internal instability and renewed conflict with the USView the full article

Exactly one year ago, Sam Altman ​made a bold prediction​: “We believe that, in 2025, we may see the first AI agents ‘join the workforce’ and materially change the output of companies.” Soon after, OpenAI’s Chief Product Officer, Kevin Weil, elaborated on this claim when he stated in an interview that 2025 would be the year “that we go from ChatGPT being this super smart thing…to ChatGPT doing things in the real world for you.” He provided examples, such as filling out paperwork and booking hotel rooms. ​An Axios article covering Weil’s remarks​ provided a blunt summary: “2025 is the year of AI agents.” These claims mattered. A chatbot can summarize text or directly answer questions, but in theory, an agent can tackle much more complicated tasks that require multiple steps and decisions along the way. When Altman talked about these systems joining the workforce, he meant it. He envisioned a world in which you assign projects to an agent in the same way you might to a human employee. The often-predicted future in which AI dominates our lives requires something like agent technology to be realized. The industry had reason to be optimistic that 2025 would prove pivotal. In previous years, AI agents like Claude Code and OpenAI’s Codex had become impressively adept at tackling multi-step computer programming problems. It seemed natural that this same skill might easily generalize to other types of tasks. Mark Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, became so enthusiastic about these possibilities that early in 2025, he claimed that AI agents would imminently unleash a ​“digital labor revolution”​ worth trillions of dollars. But here’s the thing: none of that ended up happening. As I report in my most recent New Yorker article, titled ​“Why A.I. Didn’t Transform Our Lives in 2025,”​ AI agents failed to live up to their hype. We didn’t end up with the equivalent of Claude Code or Codex for other types of work. And the products that were released, such as ChatGPT Agent, fell laughably short of being ready to take over major parts of our jobs. (In one example I cite in my article, ChatGPT Agent spends fourteen minutes futilely trying to select a value from a drop-down menu on a real estate website.) Silicon Valley skeptic Gary Marcus told me that the underlying technology powering these agents – the same large language models used by chatbots – would never be capable of delivering on these promises. “They’re building clumsy tools on top of clumsy tools,” he said. OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy implicitly agreed when he said, during ​a recent appearance on the Dwarkesh Podcast​, that there had been “overpredictions going on in the industry,” before then adding: “In my mind, this is really a lot more accurately described as the Decade of the Agent.” Which is all to say, we actually don’t know how to build the digital employees that we were told would start arriving in 2025. To find out more about why 2025 failed to become the Year of the AI Agent, I recommend reading ​my full New Yorker piece​. But for now, I want to emphasize a broader point: I’m hoping 2026 will be the year we stop caring about what people believe AI might do, and instead start reacting to its real, present capabilities. For example, last week, Sal Kahn wrote ​a New York Times op-ed​ in which he said, “I believe artificial intelligence will displace workers at a scale many people don’t yet realize.” The standard reaction would be to fret about this scary possibility. But what if we instead responded: says who? The actual examples Kahn provides, which include someone telling him that A.I. agents are “capable” of replacing 80% of his call center employees, or Waymo’s incredibly slow and costly process of hand-mapping cities to deploy self-driving cars, are hardly harbingers of general economic devastation. So, this is how I’m thinking about AI in 2026. Enough of the predictions. I’m done reacting to hypotheticals propped up by vibes. The impacts of the technologies that already exist are already more than enough to concern us for now… The post Why Didn’t AI “Join the Workforce” in 2025? appeared first on Cal Newport. View the full article

Exactly one year ago, Sam Altman ​made a bold prediction​: “We believe that, in 2025, we may see the first AI agents ‘join the workforce’ and materially change the output of companies.” Soon after, OpenAI’s Chief Product Officer, Kevin Weil, elaborated on this claim when he stated in an interview that 2025 would be the year “that we go from ChatGPT being this super smart thing…to ChatGPT doing things in the real world for you.” He provided examples, such as filling out paperwork and booking hotel rooms. ​An Axios article covering Weil’s remarks​ provided a blunt summary: “2025 is the year of AI agents.” These claims mattered. A chatbot can summarize text or directly answer questions, but in theory, an agent can tackle much more complicated tasks that require multiple steps and decisions along the way. When Altman talked about these systems joining the workforce, he meant it. He envisioned a world in which you assign projects to an agent in the same way you might to a human employee. The often-predicted future in which AI dominates our lives requires something like agent technology to be realized. The industry had reason to be optimistic that 2025 would prove pivotal. In previous years, AI agents like Claude Code and OpenAI’s Codex had become impressively adept at tackling multi-step computer programming problems. It seemed natural that this same skill might easily generalize to other types of tasks. Mark Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, became so enthusiastic about these possibilities that early in 2025, he claimed that AI agents would imminently unleash a ​“digital labor revolution”​ worth trillions of dollars. But here’s the thing: none of that ended up happening. As I report in my most recent New Yorker article, titled ​“Why A.I. Didn’t Transform Our Lives in 2025,”​ AI agents failed to live up to their hype. We didn’t end up with the equivalent of Claude Code or Codex for other types of work. And the products that were released, such as ChatGPT Agent, fell laughably short of being ready to take over major parts of our jobs. (In one example I cite in my article, ChatGPT Agent spends fourteen minutes futilely trying to select a value from a drop-down menu on a real estate website.) Silicon Valley skeptic Gary Marcus told me that the underlying technology powering these agents – the same large language models used by chatbots – would never be capable of delivering on these promises. “They’re building clumsy tools on top of clumsy tools,” he said. OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy implicitly agreed when he said, during ​a recent appearance on the Dwarkesh Podcast​, that there had been “overpredictions going on in the industry,” before then adding: “In my mind, this is really a lot more accurately described as the Decade of the Agent.” Which is all to say, we actually don’t know how to build the digital employees that we were told would start arriving in 2025. To find out more about why 2025 failed to become the Year of the AI Agent, I recommend reading ​my full New Yorker piece​. But for now, I want to emphasize a broader point: I’m hoping 2026 will be the year we stop caring about what people believe AI might do, and instead start reacting to its real, present capabilities. For example, last week, Sal Kahn wrote ​a New York Times op-ed​ in which he said, “I believe artificial intelligence will displace workers at a scale many people don’t yet realize.” The standard reaction would be to fret about this scary possibility. But what if we instead responded: says who? The actual examples Kahn provides, which include someone telling him that A.I. agents are “capable” of replacing 80% of his call center employees, or Waymo’s incredibly slow and costly process of hand-mapping cities to deploy self-driving cars, are hardly harbingers of general economic devastation. So, this is how I’m thinking about AI in 2026. Enough of the predictions. I’m done reacting to hypotheticals propped up by vibes. The impacts of the technologies that already exist are already more than enough to concern us for now… The post Why Didn’t AI “Join the Workforce” in 2025? appeared first on Cal Newport. View the full article

Big marketing dreams, but working with a tight budget? After more than a decade of marketing for bootstrapped brands, I've learned that you don't need to spend a fortune on fancy digital marketing tools to see results. It's all about building a smart toolkit that punches above its weight. One that helps you work efficiently and get results without breaking the bank. That's where this comprehensive list comes in: 28 digital marketing tools that help growing brands succeed. Many of these tools offer free or low-cost versions, so you can start small and scale up as you're ready for more features. Consider this your guide to building a powerful marketing tech stack that works within your budget. Jump to a section: Social media marketing tools Partnership marketing tools Email and SMS marketing tools SEO (search engine optimization) tools Content and design tools for marketers Conversion optimization tools Paid advertising tools Marketing analytics tools Social media marketing toolsThese social media tools help you maintain a consistent social media presence and evaluate your content performance. Buffer: Social media management for creators and small businessesA social media management tool is central to any social strategy. It helps you manage your online presence so you can post consistently and on a schedule you choose — which can help improve engagement. I've been a Buffer customer and fan for nine years, long before I started contributing to the blog. And, when I became more active in building my personal brand a year ago, Buffer was the natural choice. Since this is the Buffer blog, we're naturally excited to share how Buffer can help with your social media management. The good stuff: Capture and organize all your social media ideas in the Create spaceTrack and respond to comments on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Threads, X/Twitter, and Bluesky in a streamlined dashboard.Schedule finished posts in your social queue.The AI assistant helps you generate ideas, repurpose content, and edit posts to perfection.Buffer's Start Page lets you create polished link-in-bio landing pages in minutes.The Create space is one of my favorite features. Here's my current setup: I log all my half-baked ideas here and move them along in my custom Kanban board as they progress. I even have a prompts category for ideas in case I get stuck (many of which came from Buffer's Creator Camp) — but there's a nifty "generate ideas" button that can jumpstart your content creation. From here, adding a finished post to my queue for publishing is super easy. And with Buffer's pay-by-channel pricing model, I've been able to scale the services I pay for up and down based on what I need. For example, I used to be active on both LinkedIn and X, but now I'm only on LinkedIn. That flexibility is helpful since every dollar counts as I grow my freelance business. Plus, if you're experimenting with newer platform options, Buffer quickly adds support for new social platforms (hello, Mastodon and Bluesky). Buffer shines brightest for small businesses, solopreneurs, and creators looking to streamline their social media game without getting lost in complex features. It's the perfect balance of powerful and user-friendly — just what you need to make your social media presence pop without the headache. Pricing: Free plan available. Paid plans start at $6/month/channel. Mentionlytics: Social listening on a budgetSource: MentionlyticsHave you ever wondered what people say about your brand when you're not looking? That's where social listening comes in — and Mentionlytics makes it accessible even if you're working with a tight budget. Many social listening tools cost hundreds or thousands of dollars, putting them out of reach for small businesses. But Mentionlytics brings these powerful capabilities to small businesses at a fraction of the cost. The good stuff: Monitor mentions of your brand, competitors, or relevant keywords across social media, review sites, and the entire web.Gauge audience sentiment with AI-powered analysis.Stay on top of trends and conversations relevant to your industry.The drag-and-drop report builder also lets you create custom reports to share insights with your team. Whether you're looking to improve your customer service, gather product feedback, or keep tabs on your online reputation, Mentionlytics could be a valuable addition to your digital marketing toolkit. Pricing: Starts at $69/month. Predis.ai: Competitor analysis for social mediaSource: Predis.aiUltimately, you'll want to differentiate your social media marketing strategy from your competitors', so you don't want to copy them. But checking out what they're doing with a competitive analysis tool can help you understand their strategy and inform your own. Predis.ai surfaces these insights and can even help you generate content based on what's working in your industry. The good stuff: Decode your competitors' social media strategies on select social platforms (they're building out support for more networks as we speak).Get the scoop on which posts are hitting home runs and which are striking out for your competition.Understand content distribution patterns to time your posts for maximum impact.Uncover the hashtag strategies your competitors are using to boost their reach.Generate AI-powered posts based on what's working in your niche.All in all, Predis.ai is worth considering to learn from the wins and mistakes of your competitors so you don't have to learn them yourself the hard way. Pricing: Free plan available. Paid plans start at $32/month. Quuu: AI content curation for LinkedIn, X, and FacebookSource: QuuuThis next great digital marketing tool has been mentioned by several folks I respect who are growing their personal brands on social media. If you ever find it hard to keep your social media queue full, Quuu can help curate content from around the web that interests your audience. Then, you can blend original posts with curated content that gets conversations going without manually searching for share-worthy content. Quuu uses AI to curate content and draft posts suitable for your audience. The good stuff: Discover and share high-quality, relevant content tailored to your niche and audience.Use AI to generate custom posts for LinkedIn, X, and Facebook that you can edit and personalize so they feel like you.Chat with Quuu's AI bot to brainstorm content ideas or get help crafting your post.Seamlessly integrate with popular scheduling tools (including Buffer) to maintain a consistent posting schedule.Optimize your posting times for maximum engagement.Whether you're looking to establish thought leadership, keep your audience informed, or maintain a consistent posting schedule, Quuu can save time while keeping you up-to-date and relevant. Pricing: 7-day free trial available. Paid plans start at $19.79/month per social media profile. Partnership marketing toolsPartnership marketing is great for businesses of all sizes. It enables you to expand your brand's reach through exposure to the audiences others have already built. However, managing these relationships can get a bit fiddly if you rely on spreadsheets and email threads. These digital marketing tools can help you track relationships, streamline outreach, manage campaigns, and measure the impact of your collaborations. Influencity: Influencer marketing management on a budgetSource: InfluencityMany influencer marketing tools are in the thousands per month. But Influencity makes influencer marketing management a lot more achievable for those with a modest budget. The good stuff: Discover the perfect influencers for your brand without tedious manual searching.Manage your campaigns from start to finish, keeping all your influencer relationships organized in one place.Track your campaign performance easily by combining your brand's data with influencers' engagement stats for a clear picture of your ROI.Influencity is perfect for brands looking to dip their toes into influencer marketing for the first time or those who don't have a large budget but want to level up from managing with spreadsheets. Pricing: 7-day free trial available. Contact Influencity for pricing information. Buzzstream: PR relationship managementSource: BuzzstreamIn the five years I spent managing partnerships at Tortuga, I can't recommend using a CRM for partnerships enough. I used Buzzstream to track brand features and outreach of all kinds, including those with media, bloggers, product review sites, influencers, and affiliates. The good stuff: Manage relationships with a wide range of partners all in one place.Track and automate your outreach campaigns so no important follow-up falls through the cracks.Monitor brand mentions across the web to stay on top of your brand awareness game and link-building efforts.If you manage many partnerships for your brand, Buzzstream can help you keep all those plates spinning without dropping any. Pricing: 14-day free trial available. Paid plans start at $24/month. Email and SMS marketing toolsAfter discovering new potential customers through other marketing channels, you'll want a way to stay in direct contact with your audience so you can build deeper relationships and gather first-party data for personalization. Email and SMS marketing can help you nurture leads, maintain existing customer relationships, and drive conversions through personalized, direct communication. Mailchimp: Email and SMS for small businessesSource: MailchimpWhen it comes to email marketing tools, Mailchimp is often first to come to mind because it's versatile and approachable for new businesses. The good stuff: It has a user-friendly email campaign builder.Customizable signup forms and landing pages help you grow your list.Automate emails and segment your list to personalize messages.Paid users have the option of adding SMS to their plans.Content creator and relationship coach Mike Mantell has used Mailchimp for years to manage their email newsletter. "I find it pretty easy to make lists to distinguish where signups from different lead magnets came from," they share. "It has the basic functionality I need for email marketing." They can even create multiple email sequences on the free plan, which sets Mailchimp apart from other options. However, Mike notes that as your needs grow more complex, you might feel some growing pains: "If I have to edit any of my automations, it takes a long time for me to figure out how. It's a bit unintuitive in that way." If that's the case for you, you may consider upgrading to a specialized tool focused on your niche. Pricing: Free email-only plan for up to 250 contacts. Paid plans start at $13/month. Klaviyo: Email and SMS for e-commerce brandsSource: KlaviyoIf you're running an e-commerce business, you know Klaviyo. It's been a go-to email marketing tool for online retail stores for years. The good stuff: It's built for online shops and integrates with major e-commerce platforms.Advanced segmentation and automation features let you send emails, SMS messages, and push notifications based on shopper behavior.Robust analytics tie directly to revenue so you can see the impact of your program.I've had hands-on experience with Klaviyo at multiple e-commerce brands, and having a provider focused on online retail makes a difference. Klaviyo makes it intuitive to create segments based on your history with a customer, set up automated flows, and track revenue impact. While Klaviyo has been a frontrunner for over a decade, it's worth mentioning that alternatives like Privy and Omnisend offer similar features at comparable price points and are establishing a name for themselves as well. For those with bigger budgets and more complex needs, solutions like Sendlane and Attentive are pushing the envelope with advanced features and top-tier service. On the flip side, if you're a Shopify brand just starting out, Shopify Messaging has a generous free tier for up to 10k emails per month. While it offers fewer features than Klaviyo, it can be a good stepping stone for budding brands. Pricing: Klaviyo has a free plan for up to 250 contacts and 500 monthly email sends. Paid plans start at $20/month for email alone or $35/month for email and SMS. Hubspot: Email marketing and lead management for B2B SaaSSource: HubspotHubSpot is a powerhouse for B2B SaaS companies looking to manage their relationships with leads and customers alongside email marketing. I've used it to manage email marketing for a small tech company, and it was so helpful to be able to peek at a customer's entire journey and history with our brand. The good stuff: Combines customer relationship management (CRM) and email marketing capabilities for comprehensive lead management.Create and send email marketing campaigns for a seamless workflow.Track interactions, from website visits to email engagement, for a full picture of lead behavior.Automate email sequences based on lead actions and characteristics.Robust reporting features tie marketing efforts to sales outcomes.The email builder is intuitive. It's also powerful to be able to segment your list based on any data point in your CRM. However, the learning curve can be steep if you're new to marketing automation platforms because HubSpot is packed to the brim with capabilities. It's worth noting that while HubSpot is excellent for B2B, it'll be overkill for simpler email marketing needs. If you're not leveraging its full suite of tools, you might find better value elsewhere. Pricing: Free plan available. Paid Marketing Hub plans start at $20/user/month but can get pricey as you add more contacts and features. Kit: Email marketing for solopreneurs selling digital courses and productsSource: KitKit is an email marketing platform designed for creators and solopreneurs who sell digital products like courses, ebooks, or coaching services. Kit sets itself apart through its monetization features. The good stuff: Easy email sequence builder helps you nurture leads and sell products.Landing page builder lets you create lead magnets and pages to sell digital products directly.Tag-based segmentation allows for precise audience targeting.Anna Burgess Yang, a freelance writer who helps fellow solopreneurs improve their workflows, swears by Kit's capabilities: "I host a lot of webinars and create free downloads for my audience. Kit makes it easy for me to create landing pages and email sequences. I now have a well-oiled process for launching something new in Kit and segmenting the subscribers into different groups with tags based on what they signed up to receive." Pricing: Free plan for up to 10k subscribers. Paid plans start at $39/month. beehiiv: Email newsletters for content creatorsSource: beehiivSeveral creators I follow have switched to beehiiv recently due to its specialized features. It's a platform designed for creators who see their newsletter as the main event, not just a marketing tool. While platforms like Kit excel at selling digital products, beehiiv shines when the newsletter itself is the value you're offering. It's for those who want to turn their email list into a thriving community and potentially a revenue stream. The good stuff: beehiiv has a sleek, modern email editor for crafting engaging newsletters.It has built-in monetization options, including paid subscriptions and an ad network.Custom websites host your content, creating a hub for your newsletter.Audience segmentation and automated workflows nurture your community.Send unlimited emails on all plans, perfect for prolific writers.Buffer's own Senior Content Creator, Tamilore Oladipo, hosts her newsletter, Content-as-a-Career, on beehiiv. "I've tried many newsletter platforms and have found beehiiv to offer the most value for my usual needs," she says. It's also made it easy for Tami to monetize early on: "My favorite thing about the platform is the ability to connect to sponsors easily — I'm already monetizing with just over 1,000 subscribers." As far as more advanced features, Tami shares, "I haven't had to implement anything too complex yet, so I can't say too much about its automation capabilities. But if you're looking to get an MVP (minimum viable product) of your newsletter off the ground, it's a great tool." The platform also offers robust analytics, helping you understand what content resonates with your audience. This data-driven approach can be invaluable for creators looking to grow their readership and influence. Pricing: Free plan for up to 2,500 subscribers. Paid plans start at $49/month. ⚡Want to get serious about becoming a social media creator this year? Here's your 9-step plan. SEO (search engine optimization) toolsSEO isn't just about pleasing search engines. It's about improving your visibility so you can connect with people searching for what you offer. But search engine optimization can feel like a complex logic puzzle, especially if you're juggling other marketing channels. The right SEO tools can help you decode the mystery of search engine rankings and determine where to focus your efforts. Moz: Search performance optimization and monitoringSource: MozI've been using Moz on and off for nearly a decade. I keep coming back to it for its simple user interface and powerful features — some of which they even grant access to (at a small monthly volume) on the free plan. The good stuff: Research keywords to find high-impact search terms to target.Track your site's keyword rankings.Audit your site to identify and fix technical SEO issues.Analyze backlinks to understand who's linking to you.Get on-page optimization suggestions for your content.While Moz offers similar functionality to competitor Ahrefs, I find Ahrefs more robust and intuitive. However, Ahrefs' paid plans start at a higher price point, making Moz a more accessible option for many small businesses. Moz also rocks in the educational content department. Their webinars and SEO guides are excellent resources if you're looking to expand your SEO knowledge. Clearscope co-founder Bernard Huang's episode on ranch-style content marketing is a personal favorite. Pricing: Free plan available. Paid plans start at $49/month. Frase: Content optimization for long-form contentSource: FraseFrase is a content optimization tool that helps you create SEO-friendly long-form content that ranks well in search results. As a freelance writer, I've used several content optimization tools, including SurferSEO and Clearscope. While they all offer similar core functionality for optimizing blog posts, Frase stands out for its affordability and flexibility. The good stuff: Analyze the SERP to understand the features of articles currently ranking for your target keywords.Generate content briefs to outline your articles.Optimize content with relevant keywords.What I appreciate most about Frase is its pricing model. As a freelancer, not all of my clients need search optimization, and some provide access to their own software. Frase's monthly subscription option allows me to pay only when I need it, which helps cut down costs compared to annual subscriptions for similar tools. The intuitive interface makes it easy to analyze top-ranking content and ensure my article covers all the necessary topics. Pricing: Starts at $45/month. Google Search Console: Monitor and improve Google search performanceSource: GoogleGoogle Search Console is a free tool for understanding and improving your site's performance in Google search results. Mike Mantell, the relationship coach and content creator we mentioned earlier, relies on Google Search Console to understand how well their blog posts rank and what search terms bring people to their site. The good stuff: See which queries people use to find you.Identify which pages are performing well (and which aren't) in search results.Discover and fix technical issues that might be hurting your site's performance.Submit new content for indexing to get it in search results faster.What does Mike love about Google Search Console? "It sends me a regular email to help me gauge my progress. It's cool to see my monthly clicks go up. And I find it helpful to see which pages are growing the fastest. It's gratifying to see my progress and to home in on what's working." Pricing: Completely free. Content and design tools for marketersCreating professional, engaging content helps you capture your audience's attention and convey your message effectively. But you might not have the budget for heavy-duty tools or design experience — and that's completely understandable. These tools can bridge the gap, turning your ideas into polished visual content and crafty copy, even without specialized skills. Canva: User-friendly graphic designSource: CanvaCanva makes graphic design accessible to anyone. I've been using it for years, personally and professionally. It's my go-to tool for creating quick, polished visuals for social media posts, profile banners, and LinkedIn carousels. The good stuff: The drag-and-drop interface makes creating designs intuitive and fast.An extensive template library of various formats (social posts, presentations, flyers, etc.) makes starting a new project a breeze.There's a huge selection of stock photos, illustrations, and fonts.The Brand Kit feature helps maintain consistent branding across designs.What I love most about Canva is that you don't need to be an Adobe pro to create professional-looking graphics. The templates are a great starting point, and it's easy to customize them to fit your brand. One standout feature is the ability to resize designs for different social media platforms in one click. This is a huge time-saver when you're creating content for multiple platforms or social media channels with their own size requirements. Pricing: Free plan available. Paid plans start at $15/month for one person. Adobe Firefly: Commercial-friendly AI imagesSource: Adobe FireflyAdobe Firefly is Adobe's foray into the world of AI-generated images, and it's making waves for good reason. It can help you produce high-quality visuals quickly, especially if you need images for commercial use. The good stuff: AI-powered image generation is safe for commercial use.The intuitive interface gives you granular control over image style and composition.Firefly integrates seamlessly with other Adobe products like Photoshop.Generate variations or edit images in Adobe Express to get the results you want.Kirsti Lang, a senior content writer at Buffer, took it for a spin. Her opinion was that the free web version is surprisingly powerful. You can specify everything from aspect ratio and art style to depth of field and color tone. One standout feature is the quality of human faces in AI-generated photos. Unlike some other tools, Firefly produces realistic faces without the unsettling "uncanny valley" effect. "My results with Firefly were consistently excellent," Kirsti says, "I found that playing around with the various art styles and effects pre-generated really helped me fine-tune my ask." While the free version is great for experimenting, the watermark-free images in paid plans are worth considering for professional use. Pricing: Free version available with watermark. Paid plans start at $9.99/month. VEED: Simple video editingSource: VEEDVEED is a simple browser-based video editing tool designed to make video creation accessible to those without extensive editing experience. As someone who's dabbled in more advanced tools like Final Cut Pro, I initially found VEED limiting. However, I appreciate its simplicity for quick edits. The good stuff: It has a user-friendly, drag-and-drop interface.The auto-subtitling feature saves time when creating captions.Basic effects like green screen and filters let you customize your video.Stock footage library lets you add additional content to break up long stretches of video.What stands out about VEED is its ease of use. While I sometimes wish for more control, that's exactly why it's great for small business owners or marketers who aren't video editing pros. It's hard to make big mistakes with VEED. Pricing: Free version available with watermark. Paid plans start at $24/month. ⚡Want to compare more AI-powered video tools? Check out this list of the best AI video tools to help you write scripts, edit videos, and generate clips.Butter: Dynamic video creation for e-commerceSource: ButterButter is a specialized video creation tool designed with e-commerce brands in mind, offering a Canva-like experience for short-form product videos. As someone who's worked with e-commerce brands, I appreciate tools that streamline the process of creating engaging product content. Butter does just that for video. The good stuff: It lets you turn still product shots into dynamic videos.The intuitive drag-and-drop interface makes video creation easy.An extensive library of templates is tailored for e-commerce.Brand kit functionality helps you maintain a consistent visual identity.Butter really sets itself apart in its focus on creating dynamic product videos from a combination of still shots and video footage. It lets your marketing team create eye-catching assets on the fly for your website, email, SMS, and social media campaigns. It's a tool I wish I had when I was doing marketing for e-commerce brands. It lets you step up your video content without a huge learning curve or budget. Pricing: Plans start at $25/month. Claude: AI writing chatbot that sounds more humanSource: ClaudeEveryone has their go-to AI writing assistant at this point. Claude is mine. It's a large language model, much like ChatGPT, that you can use to brainstorm ideas, generate and edit writing, and repurpose content, among other things. I've experimented with numerous AI writing tools, including ChatGPT, Writer, Jasper, Lex, Copy.ai, and Reword. I've found Claude to be a standout option. The good stuff: It has a chat-based interface for natural, conversational content creation.You can get assistance with writing, editing, brainstorming, and problem-solving.It generates human-like text for both creative and analytical tasks.It outputs fewer inaccuracies (or "hallucinations") compared to some competitors.What I appreciate most about Claude is how human it sounds. The outputs feel more natural and require less editing than many other AI writing tools I've tried. I've also been finding Claude's Projects feature useful lately. You can add resources and custom instructions to use across multiple chats. So you don't need to add the same files and instructions over and over again. For example, I used Claude for an upcoming Buffer article to brainstorm a new outline that will be more skimmable, noting the resources I'd attached to the project: Source: ClaudeClaude also offers limited use on its free plan. So when my workload is lighter, the free plan suffices, which has led to me only paying for Claude for four out of ten months so far this year. While Claude is great for individual writing tasks, software like Narrato or Blaze might be worth exploring for teams managing large amounts of content. They offer additional features for collaboration, content repurposing, and publishing that I've found intriguing. Pricing: Free version available. Paid plans start at $20/month. ⚡Learn six ways to use AI for content creation.Conversion optimization toolsIs your website getting traffic, but not enough visitors are taking action? That's where conversion optimization software comes in handy. These digital marketing tools help you maximize your website's effectiveness at turning visitors into leads or customers — so you get more out of all your marketing efforts. VWO: A/B testing to improve conversion rateSource: VWOLet's talk about A/B testing (or split-testing) with our first conversion optimization software: VWO. A/B testing is used to determine the best way to display different elements on your website that will lead to the most conversions. For example, you might test different colors or copy for your CTAs (calls-to-action) or timing on a popup. The good stuff: VWO lets you split-test just about anything you can think of on your website or mobile app.Its user-friendly visual editor lets you create test variations without code.Use heatmaps and session recordings to understand visitor behavior.Identify drop-off points in your journey with funnel analysisCollect qualitative feedback from visitors with surveys.VWO is a great option for small businesses due to its approachable pricing that scales with you as you grow. Pricing: 30-day free trial available. Paid plans start at $633/month, billed annually. ConvertFlow: Funnel builder to guide site visitorsSource: ConvertFlowAnother important aspect of conversion optimization is personalizing your website — tailoring your visitors' experience depending on their actions. For example, you might show an exit-intent popup if they're about to leave, or recommend products based on their purchase history and other first-party data you've collected. This is where ConvertFlow comes in. Now, full disclosure: I used to work at ConvertFlow, so I'm a little biased. But I think it's a powerful tool for any business looking to personalize their website and guide their site visitors' experience. The good stuff: Create engaging popups, forms, quizzes, and surveys to capture leads and gain essential customer data to personalize their experience.Design landing pages to continue the story from your marketing campaigns (ad, email, etc.) and guide shoppers toward a conversion.Personalize website content for different audience segments.Integrate with a wide range of other digital marketing tools to share and activate the customer data you gather.A/B test your campaigns to improve performance continually.What sets ConvertFlow apart is the ability it gives you to create complex, multi-step campaigns without any coding. Its drag-and-drop builder lets anyone on your team create campaigns — something I wish I had at other brands when I had to rely on a designer for any requests. Pricing: Free plan lets you build campaigns, though you'll need to upgrade to publish them on your website. Paid plans start at $299/month. Aftersell: Revenue optimization for e-commerceSource: AftersellIf you're running an online store, getting conversions is one piece of the revenue puzzle. But increasing cart values lets you boost your bottom line without acquiring new customers. Cody Plofker, Chief Marketing and Revenue Officer at Jones Road Beauty, stands by Aftersell to increase average order value through smart upsells and cross-sells. The good stuff: Create upsell and cross-sell offers for high-intent shoppers in the cart, at checkout, and post-purchase.Customize offers based on cart contents, customer history, and other factors.A/B test different offers to find what performs best.Cody shared in a recent newsletter that he appreciates Aftersell because it has a great team and it's cheaper than similar options. "You can get post-purchase upsells, in-checkout blocks, and network offers in one tool with a capped pricing model," he says. What's particularly clever about Aftersell is its focus on high-intent shoppers. People who already have items in their cart or have just purchased are already in a buying mood, so it's a great time to upsell or cross-sell items they might be interested in. Pricing: Aftersell offers modular pricing, depending on which features you want, starting at $34.99/month. Paid advertising toolsIt can be easy to burn through your paid ads budget without seeing results. That's where paid advertising tools come in handy. They help ensure you're maximizing your ROAS (return on ad spend) and targeting the right audiences. Wordstream: Google Ads Performance GraderSource: WordstreamWondering how your Google Ads campaigns are stacking up? Wordstream's Google Ads Performance Grader lets you gain quick, actionable insights — and it's completely free. The good stuff: Analyze your Google Ads account performance.Compare your metrics against industry benchmarks.Identify wasted ad spend and opportunities for savings.Get actionable recommendations for improvement.It takes the complex data from your account and translates it into clear, actionable advice. Pricing: Free. Atria: Ad optimization for Meta and TikTok adsSource: AtriaIf you've ever felt like you're walking in a dark room when it comes to your Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok ads, Atria is like flipping on the lights. The good stuff: Manage Meta and TikTok ad campaigns in a unified dashboard.Generate engaging ad content with AI-powered assistance.Create high-converting ads from 500+ Canva templates.Automate budget allocation across best-performing ad sets.Analyze competitors to learn from their success.Refine your target audience with advanced optimization tools.Atria is really leaning into its AI features to stand out from other options in this space. Its AI can analyze your best performers and use that data to generate new ad ideas, even providing a conversion score to help you pick the most effective copy. Plus, curated "top picks" showcase winning ads from various industries, giving you a shortcut to what's working right now in paid advertising. Pricing: Free trial available. Paid plans start at $159/month. Marketing analytics toolsMarketing analytics tools give you X-ray vision into your marketing efforts. They help you see what's working so you can amplify successful efforts and adjust anything that's falling flat. Google Analytics: Free website analyticsSource: GoogleAs far as free tools go, Google Analytics is a powerhouse. I've used it at every company I've worked with for over a decade — and for good reason. It's got a surprising amount of depth and flexibility for a free analytics tool. The good stuff: Track your website traffic, user behavior, and conversion rates.Set up custom conversion events to measure specific user actions relevant to your business.Monitor the revenue impact of your marketing efforts.Analyze traffic sources to understand where your visitors come from.Create custom reports to focus on the metrics that matter most to you.Integrate with other Google tools like Google Ads and Search Console.What I appreciate most about Google Analytics is its ability to adapt to your specific business needs. The custom conversion events let you track anything from newsletter signups to product purchases, giving you a clear picture of how users interact with your site. If you don't have the budget to invest in a more comprehensive or automated tool, Google Analytics will give you most of what you need. If you're not already using it, I recommend implementing it ASAP to build up your historical data. There is a paid version (Google Analytics 360), but I've never used it — likely because its hefty starting price of $50k/year is out of reach for most small businesses. Pricing: Free. Hotjar: Website engagement analyticsSource: HotjarHotjar reveals how users interact with your website — taking the guesswork out of your visitor experience. The good stuff: Create heatmaps that show where users click, move, and scroll on your pages.Record user sessions to see exactly how they interact with your site.Collect user feedback through surveys and polls to understand pain points.Set up funnels to identify where users drop off in your conversion process.What I love most about Hotjar is how it combines quantitative data with qualitative insights. The heatmaps and recordings show you what users do, while the feedback tools help you understand why they do it. E-commerce retention expert Elliot Kovac praised Hotjar on X for the clarity it brings to user behavior: "You’ll be able to see the biggest drop-off points quite easily and take action to resolve." It's a helpful software for businesses in any industry. Pricing: Free plan for up to 200,000 monthly sessions. Paid plans start at $49/month. Amplitude: App and digital product analyticsSource: AmplitudeIf you have a mobile app or web-based digital product, Amplitude's robust analytics platform provides valuable insights into user behavior, ultimately allowing you to improve retention. The good stuff: Track user actions and create custom events to measure what matters most to your business.Build cohorts based on user behavior to understand different segments of your audience.Identify friction points in the customer journey.Create custom dashboards to keep your team aligned on key metrics.Leverage predictive analytics to forecast user behavior and prevent churn.What sets Amplitude apart is its focus on behavioral cohorts. Instead of just looking at demographics, you can group users based on their actions. This can help you identify your power users and understand what features keep them coming back. Pricing: Free plan for up to 10 million events/month. Paid plans start at $61/month. Lifetimely: E-commerce analytics for Shopify brandsSource: LifetimelyThis is another tool I wish I had when I was working at e-commerce brands. For Shopify store owners, Lifetimely offers a crystal-clear view of customer behavior and lifetime value, helping you make data-driven decisions to boost profitability and grow your store strategically. The good stuff: Track key metrics like customer lifetime value, retention rates, and repurchase probability.Forecast future revenue based on historical data and current trends.Segment customers based on their value and behavior to tailor your marketing.Compare your performance against industry benchmarks.Plus, the ability to predict customer lifetime value. This insight lets you focus your marketing efforts on your most valuable customers and improve profitability. Max Bidna, who goes by Marketing Max, reports on X that Lifetimely's Shopify charts "are second to none in terms of helping you understand the LTV from different customer segments and from different acquisition channels." Plus, the ability to compare your store's performance against others in your industry gives you a clear picture of where you stand and where you can improve. Bonus: All features are available on all plans, making it easy to grow your Shopify store. Pricing: Free plan up to 50 orders per month. Paid plans start at $149/month. Build your digital marketing stack one tool at a timeYou now have access to a comprehensive collection of digital marketing tools, each designed to help with specific aspects of your marketing efforts. But you don't need to implement everything at once. Start by identifying your most pressing marketing challenges. Is it maintaining a consistent social media presence? Understanding your website visitors' behavior? Or maybe you're looking to get into influencer marketing for the first time? Choose one or two areas to focus on initially and adopt the tools that address those needs. When you're ready to try a new channel or optimize an existing one, you can come back to explore your options and gradually expand your digital marketing toolkit. More digital marketing tools and resources 17 Must-Try AI Social Media Content Creation ToolsThe Top 10 AI Writing Tools I Recommend as a Professional Writer6 Instagram Analytics Tools That Will Help You Grow Your Audience in 20259 Time-Saving Tools to Support Creators28 AI Marketing Tools to Save Time and Boost PerformanceView the full article

Landing paid partnerships as a creator doesn’t necessarily require a huge following — but it does require a professional influencer media kit. Many brands and companies are happy to work with creators and influencers with smaller followings, but they’ll likely want to see some proof of your metrics and professionalism before sending you a contract or products. Enter: a media kit. Media kits are essential for social media influencers looking to monetize their work, no matter their audience size, says Ayomi Samaraweera, former TikTok employee turned creator, now the founder of Canopy, an online community for creators. Ayomi would know — she landed her first deal with only 2,000 TikTok followers. “It’s the industry standard for a professional creator to have a media kit readily available — it makes it a lot easier for the brand to quickly review the creator and understand their content, rates, engagement stats, and do a reference check if they include brand testimonials in the media kit.” “It saves a lot of back-and-forth emailing if you're able to share a media kit early on in the conversation. It helps you show your value with data, highlight past work experience, and make a good first impression on a brand.” There are many influencer media kit templates you can use to simplify things, but there are drawbacks to just copy-pasting your numbers into a Canva template. For one thing, it’s likely influencer marketing teams have come across the more popular free templates already (and a quick copy-paste job is not the best way to make a good first impression). You need your media kit to be accurate, professional, and most importantly, unique — just like your content. I spoke to content creators and influencer marketing team leaders to get their best advice for creating media kits that stand out. Let’s dig in and help you land your dream social media collaboration. Whether you’re a full-time content creator, micro-influencer, nano-influencer, or just getting started, here’s how to create your own media kit. What is an influencer media kit?A media kit (also called a press kit or collaborations kit) is a document or website creators or influencers will send to brands they’re looking to partner with on their social platforms. It’s usually a brief, well-designed kit that includes details about the creator, number of followers and engagement metrics, their audience demographics, the type of content they create, and examples of past campaigns. How to create an influencer media kitLet’s start with a quick checklist — gather all this information before you even begin to think about the design of your media kit. Influencer media kit checklistHere’s an overview of what to include in your media kit: Key metrics from your main social media platforms Audience demographicsSocial media linksAn ‘about me’ sectionTestimonials from past brand collaborationsRelevant content examplesContact detailsHere’s a closer look at all of the above: Key metrics from your main social media platforms Include things like follower count, engagement rate, and click-through rate for all social media accounts. Bloggers will want to include website pageviews as well. “Brands often make decisions based on data,” Ayomi says. “You want to keep the data high-level and visual, so if the brand just skim reads it, they can quickly pick up the key information — the more data-driven, the better. A good question to answer here is: “Does this creator's target audience trust them?” Ryan Prior, Head of Marketing at Modash (a platform marketers can use to track influencer marketing campaigns), says. “Engagement rate is a good start. Average views, too. Comment quality is another strong indicator. Consider showing examples of highly engaged conversations and things like DMs and Story replies that a brand might not see otherwise,” he adds. Audience demographicsThink gender, location, age, and more — whatever you have access to. “These are insights I always look out for to ensure we have strong brand partnerships,” explains Amanjit Heer, founder of social media marketing and influencer agency We Heer You. “For example, there’s no point collaborating with an influencer whose audience is majority in the U.S. if the brand only sells in the U.K. Having this on the media kit gives clarity.” Potential collaborators need to know how many people you reach in their target locations and demographics, Ryan says. “The brand would not run Meta ads without first selecting the country, ages, interests, etc. to target — the smart brands won't run influencer collabs like that either. If you know the brand's ideal customer profile, reassure them that you reach those people.” Here's a closer look at @brendenandellie's audience demographics for Instagram, surfaced by a tool called Beacons.ai, a paid service creators can use to showcase their data. (You'll find more from his kit below.) Andreea Moise, founder of Hype Maven, suggests going a little deeper here. “Keep in mind that section does need to be kept up to date depending on how fast the accounts grow. Don’t include random numbers; keep it to locations and age segments. An even better thing is to include the audience's main interests and content preferences — why are people following you, and what do they get out of your content?” Social media linksYou might think this one goes without saying, but Andreea has seen “a ridiculous amount of cold emails from creators that don’t include social links.” Include your social media links everywhere to make it as easy as possible for potential clients to review your work. That means including links in both your outreach email and your media kit. “Even better if they add it to their signature along with their social media channels,” Andreea says. An ‘about me’ section Along with a high-quality photograph of yourself, be sure to include a brief bio about your personal brand and your social media mission. Why did you start creating content? Who are you creating for? What do you hope to help your audience achieve or feel? “Start off by thinking about what you stand for as a creator and create a short bio,” Amanjit says. “This is where you can sell yourself so the brand can buy into you and see if you’re a good fit with their brand values.” Karlis Adamsons, Community and Influencer Manager at Supliful, has seen a "ton of influencer kits," he says. One of the things that makes them stand out to him is personality. "A creator who infuses their kit with their unique voice and style instantly grabs my attention. It shows they're not 'just a stat sheet' but a creative partner." Ayomi adds, “This should help the brand can get a sense of who you are as a person/creator,” “This is your opportunity to shine!” @callmeaysiab certainly does on her about me page: Testimonials from brands you’ve worked withAfter working with a brand, it’s a great idea to get feedback from your point of contact and the company on what it was like to work with you. Follow up with them after the campaign and ask for metrics and the return on investment (ROI) of your work. Past performance data on brand partnerships can be a powerful dealmaker, Andreea says. “Very few creators include this, but the ones who do are usually top one percent.” Karlis agrees that showcasing impact is a must. "Concrete examples like case studies of past brand wins or impressive engagement metrics with clear results (increased sales, website traffic) prove their value. Show how you can move the needle for brands. In my opinion, that's the golden ticket to a resounding 'yes'!" Pro tip: If you can’t get data from the brand, your own metrics — reach, engagement rate, click-through rate, etc. — will work fine, too. If you’ve adhered to your contract, been professional, and met all deadlines, they should be happy to oblige! While this is not essential (and not always possible if you’re just starting out), praise from brands can help seal the deal with new ones. Content examplesSome screenshots of and links to your best work can also be helpful. Make sure these social media posts are relevant to the kind of content you hope to create for the brand in question. If you have them, it’s also a good idea to include links to past collaborations or partnerships with brands. Here's a great client case study example from @itsgigirobinson's media kit: “Make sure you include clickable links, as brands don't want to have to spend time copying and pasting links or trying to figure out broken links,” Ayomi says. Contact informationDon’t expect potential brand partners to slide into your DMs. Set up a professional email address tied to your social media handle, which you can use to manage all communication with brands. Be sure to include this email address in your media kit, and use it whenever you have any contact with brands. Fees and ratesIncluding pricing for posts, videos, and stories on each platform can be helpful. Some creators opt not to include these from the get-go in the hope of negotiating the best brand deal, choosing to have separate rate cards, but busy influencer marketers and agencies prefer to have everything upfront. “Including your fees on media kits is super helpful to avoid going back and forth on emails and ensures everything the brand or agency needs is in one place,” Amanjit says. When there are various threads of communication going on with the creator asking for insights, fees, etc., it can get a bit confusing, so having everything in one document is ideal!” Here's how @notboredindc clearly lays out her pre-set pricing: Influencer media kit formatNow that you have all that information handy, avoid the urge to create an entire PowerPoint presentation. “You want to keep your media kit concise and visual,” Ayomi says. Aim for a maximum of two pages — there is no need to share an entire presentation deck because, most likely, the brand won't have time to review it all.” So, what should you use to create it? A PDF, Google Slide, or Canva page will work just fine. You could also opt to create a simple one-page website and send a link to the brand, rather than a document. As a creator, this is my preferred route. I don’t like to have multiple versions of a PDF file that I need to update constantly. My media kit lives in Buffer’s Start Page — I love that it pulls through playable videos from YouTube and podcast episodes from Spotify. It’s also really easy to edit and keep up to date. (Bonus: it’s free to use, too!) ⚡Create your own media kit with Buffer's Start Page in minutes. Here's how → Whatever option you choose here, be sure to make it easy to tweak and change. Your metrics will likely change pretty regularly, and it’s a great idea to personalize your media kit when pitching brands you’re really excited about working with (more on this below). Andreea says the length of your media kit is far more important than format. “I don’t have a format preference as long as it’s short and relevant,” she says. How to send your media kit to brandsNow that you’ve created the perfect media kit, how do you actually get it in front of brands? If you don’t already have a relationship with them, your best bet is a cold pitch or email. There are a number of ways to find the email addresses of brands and agencies — explore their websites for contact details, find their influencer marketing teams on LinkedIn, or join platforms like Canopy, where you can connect with influencers who have already worked with the brand. All the experts I spoke to for this article said to make sure you persionalize your pitches as much as possible, rather than emailing en masse. When it comes to pitching influencer partnerships, go for quality over quantity. “Brands get hundreds of emails from creators, so the more personal you can be, the better,” Ayomi says. “It's important to demonstrate why you're a fan of the brand and want to work with them, how your audience and content aligns with their brand and product, and to highlight your creativity.” Andreea suggests answering these questions in your outreach: “Why are you approaching that specific brand? What’s the reason behind your pitch? What is your vision for the partnership that you want to propose? Is there something that you noticed the brand could do better that you have the skills to do?”The best cold pitches should always contain a campaign idea, Ayomi adds. “This should be the hook you lead with, it shows that you've put thought into the pitch and understand the brand's positioning. It is more important to lead with creativity than with your media kit.” In other words, the goal of your email should not be, “Hey, here’s my media kit,” but rather, “Hey, here’s an amazing idea for a campaign we could partner on. Also, my media kit is here if you’d like more information.” Andreea’s last piece of advice is to keep it short and concise and always include relevant links. 4 influencer media kit examplesIf you’re new to creating your media kit, it can be really helpful to see what format other creators have used. Luckily, some great creators I spoke to were happy to oblige: Aysia B Ross@callmeaysiab, a plus-size fashion and beauty creator, has gone for a more traditional route with a two-page PDF. Note how the look and feel of the pages reflect Aysia’s joyful, inspiring brand personality. Gigi RobinsonCreator economy educator, speaker, and chronic illness advocate @itsgigirobinson has opted for a slightly longer media kit, though all of her pages are highly visual and easy to digest at a glance. Here’s a look at a few of them. Note how she includes case studies, too. See Gigi’s full media kit here. Brenden GuyParenting creator @brendenandellie uses paid online service from Beacons.ai. “You connect your socials, and it automatically updates the various analytics,” he says. “I personally prefer this so you aren’t constantly updating your own digital version manually every time you need to send it to a brand.” See Brenden’s full media kit here. Valerie MooreValerie started @notboredindc a little over a year ago and has since grown to more than 30K followers across TikTok and Instagram. She also regularly partners with brands, thanks to her impressive content skills (and her short and sweet media kit). She hosts the kit in Canva and shares the link with brands, rather than a PDF. She has also opted to include all the costs upfront. View Valerie’s full media kit here. Kambria HallMake up-artist and mid-size fashion creator @beautybykamskouture uses a template designed in Canva, along with a Beacons.ai link. Unlike Valerie, she prefers to keep her rates off her media kit. "Save your rates for the negotiation stage, once you have a full understanding of the campaign details and deliverables," she says. "It’s crucial to know the full scope of what you’re being asked to do before providing your rates." As you can see, all of these creators have very different approaches, proving that it’s important to take all the pieces of the puzzle I’ve outlined above and figure out what works for you. Do you have any great media kit tips and tricks to share? We’d love to hear them! Reach out via @buffer or @bufferapp on social media, or leave us a comment below. View the full article

When someone takes a shower at a new apartment complex in Washington, D.C., the water is heated in part by a brewery downstairs. The mixed-use development—part of a larger new neighborhood called the Bridge District—is designed to be as sustainable as possible. That includes using waste heat from commercial tenants like the brewery to save energy in the apartments. Atlas Brew Works, a solar-powered brewery that serves craft beers, moved into the building in November. At most breweries, the heat that’s generated from the brewing process would be vented outside. But in the new building, any hot water that the brewery doesn’t reuse is sent into a heat exchanger, which transfers heat to the hot water loop for the apartments. (The water itself never mixes; tenants are not showering in brewery water.) “They’re still ramping up, but they’re starting to make a lot of beer,” says William Passmore, managing partner at Redbrick LMD, the developer behind the project. “So we’re using as much of that heat as possible. We’re literally transferring the heat to support domestic hot water for all of the units throughout the building.” When the brewery is operating at full capacity and the complex’s 757 apartments are fully occupied, around 60% to 70% of the heat for the apartments’ hot water can come from the brewery. The complex is also designed to be able to harvest heat from other businesses. A small grocery store that will soon open can share waste heat from its refrigerators, for example. All of this means that residents can save money on energy bills, and the buildings have a lower carbon footprint. The heat exchange system is one piece of a larger sustainability strategy for the development, which is on track to become the largest net-zero carbon residential project in the U.S. The development is next to a metro station and a riverside bike trail, so residents can drive less. The all-electric buildings feature a solar array on each rooftop—expected to generate 228 megawatt-hours of electricity each year—with renewable power purchased to cover additional energy needs. The developers carefully tracked the carbon footprint of construction, measuring the embodied carbon of every piece of material and even how individual construction workers commuted to the site. They used materials like low-carbon steel and produced 40 different concrete mixes, carefully tailoring the amount of cement for each part of the building, which cut the overall carbon footprint of that material by 35%. In the next phase of the development, another new building will use mass timber construction. Even though some parts of the process didn’t necessarily cost much more from an engineering perspective, it took a commitment to make it happen. “You need to have the mindset and the staff and the willingness to invest in it as an organization,” Passmore says. Developers typically wouldn’t go this far. “It’s one of those things that doesn’t sound that difficult. [But as] you start to go and try and do it, [they’re thinking], ‘Oh, you know what? Let’s put this off for the next project,’” he says. The developer’s theory: The work is worth it—not just for the environmental benefit, but because tenants are looking for more sustainable options. In surveys, the companies found that the renters they were targeting in their 20s and 30s wanted options like this. “It differentiates our product, so it helps us with lease-up,” Passmore says. “We hope it will help down the road—residents will appreciate it and enjoy the lower utility bills. And perhaps they’ll stay a little longer, so that will help us again.” View the full article

An XML sitemap helps search engines discover and crawl your URLs. Learn what sitemap.xml looks like, how to generate, validate, and submit it in Google Search Console. View the full article

Artificial intelligence certainly didn’t debut in 2025, but it was the year it really started to hit the mainstream. ChatGPT, at the start of the year, had between 300 million and 400 million average weekly users. By October, that number had doubled. Meanwhile, usage of other AI systems, including Perplexity and Google’s Gemini, saw similar leaps in usage. Now, with 2026 on the horizon, people are wondering what’s next. Fast Company spoke to several analysts and industry experts to get their projections on what we can expect as AI’s influence continues to spread in 2026. The bubble won’t pop While the bears on Wall Street continue to talk loudly about an AI bubble, Wedbush’s Dan Ives says those fears are overblown and the AI trade will actually get bigger in 2026. Ives says the consumer AI revolution has not truly begun, and the expected rise of robotics in the years to come, as well as the long runway for corporate use and global expansion, will drive an ongoing tech bull market. “This AI revolution is just beginning today, and we believe tech stocks and the AI winners should be bought, given our view that this is Year 3 of what will be a 10-year cycle of this AI revolution build-out,” he writes. “We expect tech stocks to be up another 20% in 2026 as this next stage of the AI revolution hits its stride.” A leap in “lazy thinking” Not all of the predictions around AI in 2026 are quite so bullish. Gartner sends up a red flag about people’s growing dependence on chatbots and their automatic acceptance of whatever those devices spew out. Through 2026, the analytics firm predicts, there will be an “atrophy of critical-thinking skills due to Gen AI use.” That, it says, will push half of global organizations to require “AI-free” skills assessments. “As automation accelerates, the ability to think independently and creatively will become both increasingly rare—and increasingly valuable,” Gartner writes. Gen AI will move from stand-alone sites to search engines Generative AI chatbots are how many people interact with AI. They don’t require any tech knowledge (although the more you know about how to phrase prompts, the more efficient they are), and they’re free. For tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity, you generally have to visit a stand-alone website to access them. In 2026 and beyond, however, Deloitte says that more people will begin to use generative AI that’s embedded within existing applications, like search engines. “In terms of daily use, accessing Gen AI within a search engine [when a search yields a synthesis of results] will be 300% more common than using any stand-alone Gen AI tool,” the consulting firm writes. Rise of the robots While humanoid robots in 2026 may not reach the levels Elon Musk predicts, we are likely to see a substantial increase in AI-driven robotics, Deloitte says. The number of industrial robots is expected to reach 5.5 million. That’s the beginning of a wave—which could see annual shipments begin to increase until they reach 1 million per year by 2030. That increase, the firm says, will be driven by labor shortages and “exponential advancements in computing power.” A legal tsunami AI firms are already facing a number of lawsuits, most prominently involving cases in which plaintiffs argue that AI drove people to take their own lives. That has put a spotlight on the lack of guardrails around the industry. But to date, Washington has shown little interest in setting firm parameters for AI companies. (Some states are attempting to do so, however.) Gartner predicts that by the end of 2026, there will be more than 2,000 “death by AI” legal claims. The upside of this tragedy, it continues, is that it could finally push regulators to focus on safety issues. “Black box systems—AI models whose decision-making processes are opaque or difficult to interpret—can misfire, especially in high-stakes sectors like healthcare, finance, and public safety,” the analytics firm writes. “Explainability, ethical design, and clean data will become nonnegotiable.” View the full article

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Find out why your competitors show up in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews while you don‘t. And what to do about it. View the full article

For venture capital, 2025 was all about artificial intelligence—a trend that’s all but certain to carry into 2026. More than half of all VC dollars—and 36% of total deals—now flow to AI companies, according to a recent Silicon Valley Bank report. Crunchbase recently reported that 14% of all global venture investment in 2025 went to AI giants OpenAI and Anthropic. The year also saw huge deals like a $2 billion seed round raise by Thinking Machines Lab, the AI startup founded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati. AI deals are also often closing quickly, with investment rounds that once would have taken weeks to close being handled in a manner of days, says Tim Tully, a partner at Menlo Ventures. “You’re seeing people raise these large rounds with no decks, which is kind of shocking, or not even absolute clarity around precisely what the company is going to do,” he says. “You’re seeing funding of teams over what the team is doing.” But even amid speculation that the industry could be in a bubble—and some signs of public fatigue with the technology that’s snuck into everything from therapy sessions to children’s toys—investors and industry observers say the AI push will continue in 2026. TAM explosion In some ways, AI mimics the investment wave around other recent transformative technologies, like the rise of the PC, internet, and mobile phone. “New technologies come, and they’re transformative, and that drives a lot of investment,” says Steven Neil Kaplan, a professor at the University of Chicago who studies venture capital. “Some of them work out, some of them don’t, and hopefully the world becomes more productive.” But Michael Carmen, co-head of private investments at Wellington Management and the coauthor of a venture capital outlook report the firm released in December, says AI companies have recently been growing revenue at a historically fast rate—quicker than previous generations of software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies. Widespread internet use has given new AI products essentially instant access to a huge potential market, Carmen adds, noting, “When you think about the [total addressable market] of AI over the longer term, it could be the largest TAM of anything that we’ve ever seen in technology.” AI is increasingly competing with traditional SaaS businesses for both customers and investors, says Saagar Bhavsar, partner at Begin Capital. For one thing, artificial intelligence has businesses wondering if it’s more viable to build software tools in-house with the aid of new coding assistants and other AI agents. “If your cost of building the software and time of building the software is going close to zero, the whole idea of SaaS disappears,” says Sergey Gribov, general partner at Flint Capital. Even without AI, some companies have begun to reconsider the sprawling set of cloud services they’ve signed up for over the years, including deals they signed during the chaos of the pandemic shutdowns, Bhavsar says. And investors are taking note. “Few people are calling themselves B2B SaaS investors anymore, even if they did that historically,” he says. Bhavsar says VC firms and their investors are showing an increasing appetite for new kinds of opportunities, including investments in computing hardware, data centers, physical computing, and robotics. There’s also a rising interest in so-called AI roll-ups, popularized by VCs like General Catalyst, where VC-backed businesses buy services businesses like IT companies, call centers, or accounting firms with the goal of making them more efficient through AI adoption. It’s historically more like private equity investment, but the tech tie-in has made it appealing to the VC world. “The most interesting part right now is that any type of deal can be a VC deal,” Bhavsar says. “Any pitch can be a VC pitch if they pitch it right.” AI models, running on powerful graphics processing units like the ones that have helped chipmaker Nvidia’s market value skyrocket, could become the basis for a wide range of applications. (It’s similar to the wave of software developed atop Microsoft Windows and Intel chips in the PC era, suggests Carmen.) VCs are looking to invest in companies building those AI-powered apps, though they’re also still enthusiastic about the frontier labs developing the models and core technology that help AI process text, images, video, and sound. That market, after all, still sees fierce competition among companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google, and new startup labs emerging like Murati’s Thinking Machines or Tokyo-based Sakana AI. “I think there will be a lot more of these people coming out of the bigger names, or researchers coming out of academia wanting to start these research labs,” says Christine Tsai, founding partner and CEO of 500 Global. There’s also room—and VC appetite—for new, innovative AI models for other areas besides language and image processing, like autonomous vehicles and robotics. “We believe there’s going to be a company that’s going to build the robotic brain, if you will, that will power many different apps, many different use cases,” says Janelle Teng, partner at Bessemer Venture Partners. Fintech, defense tech, and the rest Still, AI hasn’t completely captured the VC sector. Other areas seeing investor interest include fintech, particularly after the 2025 IPOs of companies like Klarna, Circle, and Chime, as well as space and defense tech, Teng says. Space and defense startups also benefit from the The President administration’s push to overhaul military procurement and move business away from big defense contractors, while fintech startups may take advantage of the administration’s deregulatory approach to finance. VCs that in the past wouldn’t have invested in defense tech have also been encouraged by the success of Anduril, according to Carmen, who notes that another area of excitement for VCs is health tech, including wearable technology and other tools that help provide consumers with information to manage their health. One open question for VCs and other startup investors is whether the IPOs and acquisitions that characterized 2025 will continue into the new year. “There was a lot more activity and liquidity in the markets, and we saw it in our own portfolio, in contrast to years prior, where it was extremely dry and felt like things were still frozen,” Tsai says. A number of big startups are reportedly preparing for IPOs, including AI companies OpenAI and Anthropic and Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Their success could spur more initial offerings. Those transactions provide early-stage investors with funds for the next round of investment, though with big companies staying private for longer than in previous tech booms, there are often other ways to sell stock through company tender offers and other private deals. And, if recent activity is any indication, there’s no shortage of investor cash pursuing stakes in startups, particularly around AI. Only time will tell, of course, which of those investments will prove wise, and whether the ever-escalating valuations of so many AI companies will last. “The thing that’s hard to know is, are we in 1997, or are we in 1999,” says Kaplan. “VC investments in ’97 did very well. VC investments in ’99 did horribly.” View the full article

The design of the steel-ribbed umbrella has changed little since it was introduced in the 1850s, but the mechanical engineers and origami experts who made an umbrella that works by folding say they’ve finally improved upon it. The $249 Ori umbrella has a frameless design with a laminate composite canopy, which fits into a 3.5-centimeter cylinder smart handle with an OLED display. That means there are no steel elements that can go haywire and leave you with a misshapen mess when you’re caught in a strong wind. It seems we finally have an umbrella that looks like it was invented in the 21st century. The design team included origami experts who usually work in aerospace, research, and advanced deployable structures. And that’s where the key lay. The team used an origami technique called the the Miura-ori, invented by Japanese astrophysicist Koryo Miura in 1970, to replace the functionality of a steel frame. Miura-ori allows for a compact fold—and it has since been used in satellites. “Everyone owns one, yet the umbrella is a forgotten object, stuck in the past. We wanted to turn it into a modern device: smart, intentional, premium, and engineered like a modern device,” Ori founder Modestas Balcytis tells Fast Company in an email. The canopy feels solid when it’s open, as it’s not fabric stretched over a frame, but rather a single continuous origami surface. “When it opens, you can feel the geometry locking into place, turning a flat surface into a strong, self-supporting structure,” Balcytis says. The umbrella is wind resistant, unlike traditional umbrellas that can fold and turn inside out. Ori’s canopy surface is also UV resistant and lasts longer than a ribbed umbrella, according to the company. The umbrella is available now to reserve and is expected to start shipping in spring or summer 2026. The Ori Umbrella is priced far above your standard pharmacy brand, and it’s being marketed that way: Promotional images look akin to those you might see for Dyson vacuums or Apple iPhones. The umbrella comes in blue, silver, and gold; charges with a USB-C cable; and opens and closes with a single click. The company is pitching its product as an alternative to poorly designed ribbed umbrellas, which often break and don’t last as long. Ori says it has tested the umbrella through 400 to 500 folding cycles. This is umbrella as high tech, and the company says it has plans to design more products using the Miura-ori technique. “Ori isn’t here to sell umbrellas,” Balcytis says. “We’re building a new language for folding objects.” View the full article